Following on from the groundwork of the first volume prepared by Evan John Jones, the thread continues through expansion, evolution, and return to the Weaver Herself. Experiential research bears fruit, en-fleshing the seeds planted by previous workers of the lineage. Guided and inspired by tradition, prompted by oracular observation, intellect and mental detective work. Concepts and core principles of our Mythos and Praxis reveal a shift of awareness and a ‘Perennial Philosophy’. This is an ecumenical gnostic current that has revealed a deeper understanding of our work and its obligations, both to ourselves and to our ancestors.

Discussed here are subtle treasures unearthed within a rich heritage of folklore, myth and legend. Overarching paradigms that include the Egregore, Clanship, Mysticism and Luciferianism. These essays build upon the former volume, expounding a vibrant dramatic aegis. Here find a new voice to herald the eternal paean, the Song of the Beloved: Promethean gnosis of the Star Crossed Serpent.

Contents

Intro: The Ring Troth of Cain
1. The Archer’s Song
2. Brimstone & Treacle
3. The Faith of the Wise
4. The Stang
5. The 4th Nail
6. Dark Aegipan and Pale Leukothea
7. Cain and Craft Diversity
8. Cain, Clanship and the Egregore
9. Patterns of Transformation: the Alchemy of Being
10. The Poison Chalice
Epilogue

David Aronson lives and works in the Philadelphia area. His quirky, offbeat drawings, paintings and illustrations combine traditional media such as watercolor, ink, graphite and colored pencil with digital media and digital collage. His work ranges from whimsical to fantastic, from highly stylized to realistically rendered, and has been called unique and highly imaginative. It mixes lowbrow with fine art elements and often employs unusual juxtapositions. Thematically, David often delves into the realms of mythology and psychology.

He has created art for CD covers, music videos, magazines, books, music posters and tour t-shirts. David is also an oil painter and has completed several public and private commissions. His digital animation has been featured on MTV2 and Fuse, and his drawings and illustrations have appeared in Silkmilk, Ritual, Inside Artzine, Khooligan, Fugue and BigNews, as well as being exhibited nationally in galleries and museum shows. His work has been featured in a college level illustration textbook, and most recently in the book The Immanence of Myth.

David is an art teacher, working with both children and adults, teaching several different media. He was once the sole owner and operator of a small art school in the Philadelphia suburbs. He is also a certified hypnotherapist, professional astrologer, and published poet.

Reviews blurbs:

Aronson is one of the most powerful / disturbing living artists…putting an erotic spirituality, equal to that of William Blake, into a nightmare that is darker than H.R. Giger’s.
–Frank Moore, Cherotic Revolutionary Magazine

David Aronson’s work is nothing short of digital alchemy; a spiritual, energetic example of subversion that does not detract from the reverence for his chosen subject matter. To look upon his work is to see through the eyes of a man achingly familiar with a broad spectrum of emotion. It is, quite simply, Truth, filtered through a stained glass window in another world.
–Glossolalia Black, Odd Culture

If you were ever a fan of Omni magazine or Salvador Dali you will be thrilled by David Aronson’s work. He conjures up horrific psychological landscapes in his surrealist cauldron; personal exorcisms writhing with erotic fantasies. His work also possess a hidden warmth, an empathy, which is woven throughout his nightmares serving to make his work embraceable. Whether this is done intentionally or as a cathartic result of the art itself is a mystery. And this would be just one of many dark mysteries inspired by David’s art.
–Robin Parry, Origivation Magazine

When Tom Bradley was a little boy he was given a gazetteer for Christmas. As little boys will, he looked up all the places in the world that start with the F-word. There were two, Fukien in China and Fukuoka in Japan. Little did he suspect that he would one day be exiled to both.

Tom is a former lounge harpist. During his pre-exilic period, he played his own transcriptions of Bach and Debussy in a Salt Lake City synagogue that had been transformed into a pricey watering hole by a nephew of the Shah of Iran.

He taught anglophone literature to Chinese graduate students in the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was politely invited to leave China after burning a batch of student essays about the democracy movement rather than surrendering them to “the leaders.”

Tom wound up teaching conversational skills to freshman dentistry majors in the Japanese “imperial university” where they used to vivisect our bomber pilots and serve their livers raw at festive banquets. But his writing somehow sustains him.

Tom’s latest books are Family Romance, a novel illustrated by Nick Patterson (Jaded Ibis Press), A Pleasure Jaunt With One of the Sex Workers Who Don’t Exist in the People’s Republic of China (Neopoiesis Press), Bomb Baby (Enigmatic Ink), Vital Fluid (Crossing Chaos), Even the Dog Won’t Touch Me (Ahadada Press), Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch (Dog Horn Publishing), My Hands Were Clean (Unlikely Books) and Put It Down in a Book (The Drill Press), which was named 3:AM Magazine’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Further curiosity can be indulged at http://tombradley.org.

Reviews and blurbs:

Tom Bradley is one of the most exasperating, offensive, pleasurable, and brilliant writers I know. I recommend his work to anyone with spiritual fortitude and a taste for something so strange that it might well be genius.
— Denis Dutton, Arts & Letters Daily

I tell you that Dr. Bradley has devoted his existence to writing because he intends for every center of consciousness, everywhere, in all planes and conditions (not just terrestrial female Homo sapiens in breeding prime), to love him forever, starting as soon as possible, though he’s prepared to wait thousands of centuries after he’s dead.
— Cye Johan, Exquisite Corpse

The contemporaries of Michelangelo found it useful to employ the term “terribilita” to characterize some of the expressions of his genius, and I will quote it here to sum up the shocking impact of this work as a whole. I read it in a state of fascination, admiration, awe, anxiety, and outrage.
— R.V. Cassill, editor of The Norton Anthology of Fiction

For more than two decades, Nikki Wyrd has been intensely involved in group magickal practices. A lifelong member of the Illluminates of Thanateros, she is currently head of the British Isles Section. An organiser of occult conferences, Vice Chancellor of Arcanorium College, and holder of a BSc in Ecology, this is her first published book. Nikki lives on the edge of a city, with water meadows at the end of her garden.

This work is an abstract art asssociated with pittura metafisica, or metaphysical painting. It may be understood as an aesthetic structuralism that conveys a structural infinity. In this way it is archetypal and involves the Jungian archetype. It involves a philosophical perspectivism, and a ‘low’ or abyssal dionysian abstraction, which I bring into interiors, still life, landscape, and portraiture. I convey a sculptural figuration and also utilise the theme of the mannequin, as the psychic apparatus. Its figuration then involves a kind of realism, in an existential sense of realism. In general these originated from an interest in bringing the dionysian into graphic, perspectival, and figurative work, and from Heideggerian kind of experience of space, that contains a structurality. It is related to abstract surrealism and metarealism, but emphasises an essence or immanence, which I understand through the tragic, and the shadow, and an afternoon withdrawal.

A ‘Sâdhana’ is an instrument that leads to a particular goal. In Tantra, it is a technical term denoting worship or spiritual practice.

Tantra Sâdhana is a collection of related instructional papers designed to aid the aspirant through a foundation practice.

The work was originally conceived as leading to a practice over the course of one lunar month. In addition, the author had added several useful appendices – including the previously unpublished Tantrik Knuckle Bone Oracle.

The reader might find this a good general primer combined with some more unusual, perhaps advanced material.

“I first became interested in Tantra years ago when I read AGHORA, At the Left Hand of God by Robert E. Svoboda. The ideas of breaking out of social conditioning, becoming yourself, all appealed to me. Since then though my interest waned due to the New Age inundation of, ‘tantra for lovers’ type waffle.

Then comes Tantra Sadhana for me to review and I once again find myself inspired. This e-book takes the form of an introduction to the subject and then gives the reader some basic ritual to work through. First published as a fact-sheet for AMOOKOS, Arcane and Magickal Order of the Knights of Shamballa, so you know the information in chapter one is solid enough.

The inclusion of the Gnostic Pentagram Ritual was not to my taste, It’s a personal thing, but I would rather the author had used the version from the PGM, from which the GPR is a more rubbish version. I know why it’s there, but it didn’t work for me.

What I did find very useful was the extensive appendix, for me, this is the best part of the book, and with a little imagination can be used to form your own Tantric rites. I was very pleased to see the Ganapati Upanishad text included, I was at a private ritual years ago where Phil Hine did this and I found it very moving.

Anyone interested in Tantra beyond the New Age tripe will enjoy this book and I would recommend it without reservation. I would also say it’s worth reading for people interested in Chaos Magick, because reading it, it becomes obvious how Tantric ideas have shaped the Chaos Current that we have today. ”

Suitable for all those inspired by such figures as Austin Spare and Aleister Crowley, and who feel the imperative to develop one’s own unique magick way. Visual Magick aims to build vision, imagination, and creative magick. It shows how magicians, witches, artists and therapists can improve visionary abilities, enhance imagination, activate the inner senses, and discover new modes of Trance awareness. The emphasis is on direct experience and the reader is asked to think, act, do, and enjoy as s/he wills.

Visual Magick began as a small treatise on sigil Magick and automatic drawing circulated privately amongst members of the Maat network, and is written for practising mind explorers of the unorthodox variety.
Review for Pentacle Magazine www.pentaclemagazine.org by Kate Hoolu

‘No matter what the medium, a talented priest can communicate … without preaching or didacticism. Art shows rather than tells. All great artists function as priests, whether they think of themselves as priests or not.’

If you are an eclectic magickian or shaman, or have any interest in Austin Osman Spare, this is a book for you. Spare said, “All desire, whether for pleasure, knowledge, or power, that cannot find ‘natural’ expression, can by sigils and their formula find fulfillment from the subconscious”. This book is at least in part a modern view of the sigil magick that derives from AOS. But it is much, much more.

Fries has written on several subjects, including the Tao and Rune magick, but this work shows a very good awareness and ability with Spare’s techniques, cross-fertilised with some of the more well-known methods of shamanism and his own innovations; hence the subheading.

Fries makes the important point that sigils can not only be designed by the operator (for whatever magickal purpose) but also RECEIVED from entities too… and in those cases there is often a useful secret to be discovered within the sigil: “it should be noted that, while the sentience behind these sigils appears independent, their aesthetics are usually suited to the personality of the receiver. The best kind contains a blend of known and unknown…half revealed and half concealed”. This also stands as a beautifully short summary of perhaps what Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law are about- obviously it is in AC’s writing style, but has so much more within…. And Kenneth Grant’s work on the Tunnels of Set is supposedly largely based on received sigils.

Regardless of occult debate about whether these received messages derive from a neurological or a non-human source, which is not within the scope of this review, it makes perfect sense for them to appear in this ‘mixed’ manner. If they were completely incomprehensible they would be ignored, and if they were completely ordinary and fully known already, then they would be un-remarkable and pass from consciousness as quickly as yesterday’s newspaper headlines. The half-unknown element makes them all the more tempting and interesting to the magickian, like a partly open door….

Avalanches of really good points are made by JF, which are eminently sensible, humourous and useful. Not for him is gibberish pontificating about very fine points of obscure theory; his stance is very much of the Chaos magician- ‘get off your ass, find what works, use it and keep trying new things’ and get out of your conditioned tunnel realities, rather than relying on dogmatic magickal techniques that often descend from book to book, unchanged and without ever being challenged. He makes the very important point that you must allow yourself to make mistakes, and perceive them as that, and not as something else that is kinder to one’s often bloated magickal self-view:

‘Failure’ is recognized as a threat to ego… the same ego that so happily pretends to have divine power and authority… and so the whole thing is usually considered a ‘challenge’ or ‘ordeal’ in such cases- anything rather than accept that one might be wrong” – Indeed: in magick, strange things happen, to the point where, as Ramsey Dukes has said (somewhere): “cock-up is the word of the Aeon”

As the title suggests, there is a distinctly artistic bent to this work, but you don’t ever need to have sketched anything before to be able to join in with this stuff – it’s not the quality of what you produce, it’s the intent of the experiment: Fries encourages everyone to experiment with drawing sigils, automatic writing etc, but in all of this to take credit or debit for the works created (and the results of using the sigil magick method): “Frequently people need to insist on the ‘automatic’ origins of their creations (and behaviour) when they dare not assume responsibility for them. It’s so much safer to claim ‘I can’t draw but sometimes the spirit of Leonardo comes over me …’ as if that spirit has nothing better to do!… It’s always easier to blame some spiritual agency than to assume the responsibility of recognizing and developing one’s own talents”

Having dealt at length with visual methods, Fries then describes ”Chaos language”, a kind of glossolalia, which can be seen as a way of making auditory sigils with the voice. The book is worth the cover price just for this part. Awesome! Jan Fries:- add him to the growing list of ”people we like”. Superb, inspiring book.’ – KH
‘One of the best books on magick I have read in a long while.’Pagan News

In this book you will find a study of the divination system known widely as the I Ching, but here presented with all its magick intact and in a totally unique way. This leads naturally to an examination of the techniques of Taoist meditation and finally to a look at the divine entities that lie behind the system – the Immortals.

Anyone who has read Jan Fries’s inspiring books – Helrunar, Visual Magick and especially Seidways: Shaking, Swaying and Serpent Mysteries, cannot have failed to notice that some of the magical techniques of the east and of the Taoist tradition are very close to his heart. Here you will find many practical exercises, I Ching divination in the mind, breathing experiences and visualisation of coloured vapours.

‘You can find the Immortals exploring the hidden delights of enchanted fairy grottoes, flower gardens, pine forests and pleasant autumn lakes. They walk on clouds, they sit in shady valleys enjoying the swirling mists and rest in the heart of the living midnight. You can meet them in the centre of yourself once you become empty enough. And you can meet them out here, walking in the world, disguised as mortals.’

‘May the high-born reader cast a benign and forgiving eye on this work, experiment with its humble methods and come to a higher understanding of the mysterious workings of the Tao.’ – Jan Fries

If you have been following the ‘debate’ rumbling in various publications concerning Jan’s theories concerning the Seething/Seidr technique – then this greatly expanded new edition has a revised chapter on Seidr that addressses some of these issues.

Preface to the new edition
‘When I went to school, my history teacher told us about the old Germani. In her opinion, the Taunus mountains were populated by a bunch of brawny brawlers who wore horned helmets and small pieces of pelt. They lived in hilltop settlements which were fortified by ringwalls. Barely able to manage agriculture, they had to rely on hunting to fill their stomachs. They lived in shabby huts with mud-plastered walls and when the Romans came, they fought the invaders with crude swords, pointy sticks and by hurling rocks at them…’

‘Nowadays, the ringwalls of the Taunus are known as the work of La Tène Celts, who lived on the heights in well organised cities. For this new edition much of the text has been rewritten and updated. A large section on the bronze ages, the Celts, Germani and the later Vikings added. The theme of Wodan and Helja has been elaborated with more detail on pagan Scandinavia. The chapter on magical rune inscriptions has been extended, on Seiðr/seething trances rewritten, the bibliography updated and twelve pages of new illustrations added.’

The Runes are a pan-European magical language. Its roots lie in the ancient pagan beliefs of our ancestors, who built many thousands of stones circles, long barrows and dolmens throughout ancient Europe. These same symbols and techniques were used by the pagan Celts and Germans. This book is a complete manual of magick based upon arcane symbolism and secret techniques.

The spiritual traditions of Ancient Egypt are well documented and are at the forefront of the Western Mystery and Magical Tradition. But they are a gloss over a more primal “shamanic” tradition which gets to the essence of Nature and its relationship with humanity, life and death.

This book is a practical manual for those who wish to explore that primal spirituality using Egyptian symbolism. As Egypt was one of the village cultures, so Egyptian shamanism was one of the first to operate in an urban environment, making its techniques suitable for modern times.

Egyptian Shaman paints the picture of what it was like to be a village priest in Ancient Egypt before describing the practical techniques which would have been employed during those times. These techniques, which have never been revealed before, have been adapted for modern minds with the intention of making this a practical spiritual path.

The book controversially contains a chapter on exorcism and dealing with the dead, which many have claimed are subjects which should not be published. It shows how later Egyptian texts, such as the Book of the Dead, were Shamanic guide books to the Underworld.This is a book containing the keys to transmute,not only the self, but the whole planet.

THE AUTHOR
Nick Farrell is a writer and journalist based in Rome. After a lifetime in the Western Mystery Tradition, during which he was taught by some of the luminaries of the Esoteric World, including Marian Green, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, David Goddard and Chic and Tabatha Cicero, he founded the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, which is a worldwide traditional Golden Dawn Order. He has also written several books on esoteric subjects including the esoteric classic Making Talismans, Magical Pathworking, and The Druidic Order of Pendragon. He has also written Mathers’ Last Secret and King Over the Water which deals with the Golden Dawn tradition.

Every universe potentially has its own Supreme Grimoire containing the spells which define its reality and the magic which you can perform within that reality. In this Octavo we have assembled scattered secrets for a Supreme Grimoire for Roundworld, the universe in which you’re standing.

To this end we have taken some inspiration from Pratchett’s Discworld, and a lot from Theoretical Physics and Practical Chaos Magic.

The most original, and probably the most important, writer on Magick since Aleister Crowley.”
– Robert Anton Wilson. Author of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy.

Review of The Octavo by Dave Lee
This is the second book Pete Carroll has brought out in the last two years, after a number of years’ silence. In 2008, there was ‘The Apophenion’, which was something of a departure towards an overall philosophical position, which we might call chaoism, as distinct from chaos magic. Now he presents us with a new synthesis that aims at a much closer marriage of scientific theory and magic than he, or, to my knowledge, anyone else, has attempted.

The first thing you’ll notice about this book (other than the excellent illustrations) is the subtitle. The reference will be lost on non-Pratchett experts like me; I’ve enjoyed a few of Pratchett’s books and found others a bit twee for my taste. (I have to admit, though, that he shows superb understanding of the thermodynamics of godhood in ‘Small Gods’, and a brilliant vision of the Other in ‘Lords and Ladies.’) Apparently, there’s an Octavo of Discworld spells, and it seems this volume is using the conceit that it’s the Roundworld equivalent in order to show how physics and magic can be combined in two very different universes.

The second thing you’ll notice is the physics. Publishers say that every equation in a book halves the readership, and there are a lot of them in The Octavo*. More, in fact, than in Liber Kaos, but they – at least the ones in the first few chapters – are of a very different kind.

The ‘Equations of Magic’ in Liber Kaos have always been problematic: they dealt in quantities which are not measurable, and probably never will be, like ‘degree of gnosis’ and ‘magical link’. So, they are not really equations, but things that look like equations; what they amount to, at best, is a mental checklist, a summary of what we know about magic so far. With a shorthand like that, all that matters is that it’s easily memorable, and the physico-mathematical symbolism does not help at all.

The equations in Octavo are very different. They are much more ambitious, genuinely cosmogonic in nature, and I suspect they have some very important things to say – to those who understand them rather more deeply than I do. I did get lost for much of chapters 2 and 3 (I only have maths to just short of A-level), but surfaced again at the start of Ch 4, where he compares Discworld and Roundworld physics, and comes out with some pretty profound stuff.

One of the things that’s particularly interesting about Carroll’s science is the way he attributes real physical – or aetheric / shadow-physical – reality to quantities that appear in the fundamental equations of physics. In Liber Kaos for instance the wavefunction in the Schroedinger equation is a measure of a real quantity in shadow-time, rather than a mere mathematical convenience, to be discarded as soon as possible in the course of calculations. No, Carroll finds a home for these misty, despised quantities, integrating them into a description of a magical universe. In The Octavo, he comments about quantum superposition, which is a concept we’re normally just supposed to get our heads round, that it actually has fine detail which makes it much more physically real – the alternative forms of the particle are kind of parked in sideways-time. For me, that is a distinct improvement on the usual way superposition is described.

This realistic use of mathematical entities recalls Galen Strawson’s ‘real materialism’**, as does this (p97):

‘A visualized or imagined event can have a similar effect on the imaginary time plane as the probability function of a material event, because it too constitutes a wave-particle event’.

In other words, ‘thoughts are as real as rocks’, to the real, Strawsonian materialist. Carroll also gives a physico-mathematical reality to Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields – they are the information contained in the virtual radiations emitted by everything all the time.

I do like the depiction of particles as closed universes (p23), and it’s satisfying to read Theories of Everything, but the problem for the mathematically sub-literate becomes: how can I distinguish the true ones? I’m not sure that Carroll’s doing away with the Big Bang (a dirty job, but someone had to do it) yields a truly more complete ToE than the current one: a steady state model of the universe comes no closer to explaining where everything comes from than the expanding-from-a-point one does, it simply makes it an unaskable question, which is not the same thing. His cosmological explanation of the red shift (the core mystery of cosmology) involves something like a new mechanism for Zwicky’s previously-rejected ‘tired light’ hypothesis, and I have asked a mathematical friend of mine how viable an explanation it is.

Some of my reservations about this book stem from Carroll’s over-willingness to form Laws. Right near the beginning of the book, he has concreted the ‘multiple selves’ model into one. The idea of selfhood as multiple arose out of a very postmodern milieu of thought about what we are, and has proved very useful to magicians. However, it does suffer from a vagueness at its core: it would be a good idea to clarify the difference between personalities and the moment-to-moment sense of selfhood. The former may be usefully thought of as multiple, but the sense of self is always and ever phenomenologically singular. I challenge anyone to describe how it can be sensed otherwise.

This excessive taste for laws surfaces again on p66, where Carroll attempts to prove that there is always ‘ an even number of selves’, with an argument I found so unconvincing I suspect the author is self-consciously preaching to the choir, knowing we’ll indulge him.

My main criticism of the book is that the ‘Equations of Magic’ reappear in Ch6. I’ve said above why they are not equations, but simply tally-sticks; they remind me of Frazer’s useless laws of magic, but with added algebra to put more people off. Has a magician ever told you they’ve helped him or her plan a working?

Their inclusion wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it wasn’t for the very high quality of arguments pursued using real equations in the cosmological parts of the book: to someone who hasn’t been following the maths very closely but can see how the EoMs cannot be real equations, they simply serve to cheapen the value of the other equations and arouse suspicion about their validity. And to use them to derive, via a complicated chain of reasoning, the conclusion that group magic is no more powerful than individual magic is pure tautology, because the only way anyone could get that conclusion would be by building it into the ‘Equation’ in question.

By the way, can we have a straw poll on this? My feeling is that group magic is immensely more effective for some kinds of enchantment.

The final complaint I have is a purely aesthetic one. Sure, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to replace the phrase ‘material base’ with something else, because we do talk about servitors quite a lot. But the term ‘groundsleve’, to my ear, is down in the flooded and odious basement of English, along with ‘staycation’ and ‘bromance’. (OK, I suppose that means I’ll have to come up with one myself.)

Back to a few final words of praise: One of the satisfying things about this book is the way Carroll fills out and brings up to date old ideas, some of which he has developed and used years before. Like the way the good old GPR gets completed into the GCR, a much more symbolically satisfying and complete thing.

Proper weight is given to the Apocalypse, and what wizards can do to help avert the collapse our stupidity has got us into.

I have to make a special mention of the llustrations. If there was an award for ‘best occult book graphics of the year’, then Matt Kaybrin’s would sweep it, with these bold, dark, unusual mixtures of traditional and cyber-art.

In the end, I would definitely recommend this book. It is important, maybe very important, and will stir some interesting thoughts even in the non-mathematically-inclined. Carroll’s basic attitude to mysteries is the only healthy one: not to try and banish them, like the Dawkinsian parascience bunch, or use them to obfuscate, like the religious do. He writes: ‘Mysteries should present challenges, not opportunities for dumb belief.’

*I showed the book to a mentally tough shaman I know, and as soon as he saw the equations, he declared he’d rather chew his leg off than try to understand them.

‘The Octavo is remarkable in the finest sense of the word: a great and indeed unique achievement, making a genuine physics of magic’.
– Professor Ronald Hutton

In the autumn of 1888, London women lived under the shadow of the Ripper murders-killings perhaps unmatched in their sadistic brutality.

Sickert & The Ripper Crimes derives from the unsuspected testimony of the woman who had particular reason to fear for her life.

Florence Pash, friend and colleague of the artist Walter Sickert and herself an artist, confided to the author’s mother when in her late eighties, a terrible story that she had kept even from those closest to her.

‘timely and welcome…remains a curious and important book’
– Paul Begg in Ripperologist, April 2002

*Ripperologist, The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies is available in electronic format, on subscription / Email contact@ripperologist.biz

—
JEAN OVERTON FULLER
OBITUARY

The author, biographer and Theosophist Jean Overton Fuller was born on 7th March 1915, of Captain John Henry Fuller and the artist Violet Overton Fuller. The posthumous child of her father, who was killed in East Africa in the winter of 1914, her mother brought the young Jean up, with an entourage of intellectuals and artists.

Jean Overton Fuller is known in the field of Ripperology for her book Sickert and the Ripper Crimes. A study of the enormously talented Edwardian painter Walter Richard Sickert, in which, using her artist eye she scrutinises the paintings he produced for clues about the 1888 Ripper murders. Sickert found thrill and inspiration in the music halls, and the murky regions of the demi-monde and its inhabitants. The man was an enigma, his obsession with the Ripper murders, and the atmosphere of impending gory death, with the nudity, garishness, the strong scarlet hues, and the threatening shadows depicted so disturbingly in The Camden Town Murder series of his paintings, have raised questions and suspicion about the nature of Sickert’s fascination.

Jean, through her mother, was a contemporary link to these events, and with Sickert and the Ripper Crimes had generated a considerable amount of interest from the public as well from among her fellow writers, such as for instance the American best-selling author Patricia Cornwell and her contribution to the subject with her Portrait of A Killer: Jack The Ripper, Case Closed.

Paul Begg and Adam Wood of Ripperologist had invited Jean Overton Fuller to speak at the 2003 Ripper Conference in Liverpool. Mogg drove from Oxford to Wymington, a small locality in Northamptonshire to collect Jean en route to the Conference. This weekend in August was one of the hottest in the year. After the nightmare journey of the A5 to Liverpool with cars slowly moving head to tail, they were rewarded and arrived at the gigantic and labyrinthine Britannia Adelphi Hotel, a venue specially chosen for this Conference because of its Ripper connection. Jean greatly enjoyed this event and the very good and erudite company of the international fraternity of Ripperologists. The late Jeremy Beadle was the Master of Ceremony and introduced Jean to the audience, and she came alight on stage and spoke entertainingly for about half an hour without notes.

This was Jean’s penultimate public engagement. The last being Jean’s talk on C.W. Leadbeater, at the 2005 Theosophical History Conference in London.

Jean was hard of hearing which at times made her appear distant. She was a great English eccentric, humorous, kind, highly intelligent with a far ranging culture. She was extraordinary.

Her friends and those who met her will remember her with great warmth and affection. When you met Jean, even though the age gap, there was no sense of an age barrier. She was a rare soul.

LORETTA LAY
– is a Specialist Detective Fiction and True Crime Bookdealer and a leading authority on Jack The Ripper.
www.laybooks.com
*****

MURDER ONE UK
– Murder One UK is an online, mail order only bookseller and a successor to the famous Murder One bookshop that traded in the heart of Charing Cross Road for over twenty years.
www.murderone.co.uk
*****

CASEBOOK
– is the Web’s largest public Jack The Ripper Archive.
www.casebook.org
*****

JACK THE RIPPER FORUMS
– The place to be for all things Ripper.
www.jtrforums.com
*****

RIPPEROLOGIST
– The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies, is available in electronic format on subscription /Email contact@ripperologist.biz
www.ripperologist.com
*****

– Haunted by the failure to catch Londonʼs most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) now heads up the notorious H Division – the toughest police district in the East End. Charged with keeping order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his men fi nd themselves fi ghting to uphold justice and the rule of law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper – is he back for another reign of terror.

The shadow of the Ripper is still felt in the neighbourhood by the vigilantes, the sensation-seeking newspaper hacks and the men who hunted – and failed to find – the notorious murderer. It seems that even though the notorious killer has disappeared, there are plenty more willing to stain the streets of Whitechapel with their victims’ blood…

Robert studied biblical (better called “Helenistic” or “koine”) Greek in the early 1970s, also biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Coptic. His professors were Margaret Howe and Ronald Veenker, both now retired. Neither of them endorse or approve of his theories, especially those in Jesus the Sorcerer. Robert made a detailed study of the Greek New Testament although he is agnostic about all supernatural claims. Our best surviving evidence on Jesus is that he was one of many local apocalyptic Jewish prophets, likely reacting to the presence of Romans and Roman influence in Palestine. Like similar figures, Jesus was an ecstatic performer who did healing and exorcism (a quintessentially Jewish preoccupation), and displayed other charismatic “gifts” such as mind reading as proof of his prophetic calling. He was, as Morton Smith pointed out, what both ancient and modern people would regard as a “magician,” but he preached the coming of an apocalyptic judgment that would come within his generation and that, obviously, did not happen.

Robert’s current focus is how the study of consciousness might increase our understanding of paranormal phenomena.

Hocus Pocus – Witch-doctors, sorcerers, priests and imams in the shop
Ritual Magick for the BBC

A Spooky Aside A ghost story

A Rose by any Other Name – pheromones and other human smells

The Fats of Life – What your mother would have told you if she’d known. Essential oils, absolutes and fixed oils. Are we consuming the right amount and balance of fats in our diet? Are therapists damaging their clients by using seed oils as carriers?

The Old Bazaar in Cairo. I taught for a while at Cairo University. Most tourists encounter the perfumers in the bazaar but they don’t get to see what’s going on behind the scenes

The Camden Town Murder
The Life & Death of Emily Dimmock
John Barber
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 9781869928919
£12.99/US$18
Subjects: True Crime/Ripperology.

“Her throat was cut, from ear to ear; her head almost severed from her body.’

On the morning of September 12th 1907, the body of Emily Dimmock was found in her rented rooms in Camden Town, London. The murderer has never been identified.

EMILY DIMMOCK followed the tragic fate of so many poor working class girls, by working as a domestic servant and then as a prostitute in London’s notorious King’s Cross area.

This is the story of the victim; along with an account of the times in which she lived, and the circumstances surrounding her death. Is this another crime of the imagination? Recent books have seen parallels between The Camden Town Murder, and the Whitechapel killings of Jack the Ripper, and the Peasenhall Mystery of 1902.

In THE CAMDEN TOWN MURDER, John Barber presents the reader with a modern day investigation, analysing and retracing the events with the story’s protagonists, with previously unpublished letters and a new interpretation of the forensic evidence.

This is also a social history and an account of the human condition of the people living in the Victorian and Edwardian eras: the upper classes and their domestic servants, the labouring poor, the ‘fallen women’, the music-halls, the artists, and the demi-monde. All these moving against alternating backgrounds of greys, black and crimson, and enraptured with the vapours of wormwood.

The Author: John Barber is a researcher and writer, whose published works include a collection of absorbing murder mystery novels. His popular and informative website, features books, articles, & gazeteers on the socio-cultural history of Britain and its great metropolis London.
www.johnbarber.com

—REVIEWS

WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK’s article on THE CAMDEN TOWN MURDER
in THE SUNDAY TIMES
www.waldemar.tv/2007/11/walter-sickert-murderous-monster-or-sly-self-promoter/

–Review as featured in the Hertfordshire Mercury

‘Author usurps crime queen’s Ripper theory. A Hertford author has slammed crime writer Patricia Cornwell’s theories on Jack the Ripper in his latest book. John Barber, who is also the town centre manager, has penned The Camden Town Murder and is due to take part in a BBC documentary about the killer. In his book he pours cold water on the American crime queen’s speculation that a girl from Standon was the last victim of the Victorian serial killer. Ms Cornwell spent a fortune trying to prove that prostitute Emily Dimmock was killed by artist William Sickert, whom she believes was the Ripper. But John, 59, who has been researching the circumstances around Emily’s tragic death, claims Ms Cornwell has wasted her time and money. In the chapter entitled ‘Was Emily Dimmock a Ripper Victim?’ he writes: “In attempting to answer this question, one problem springs to mind. Why was there a gap of 19 years between the murder of Mary Kelly [a Ripper victim] and Emily Dimmock?”Surely a serial killer kills and then kills again until he is caught or dies. Rarely do they wait 19 years to strike. Yet this is what Patricia Cornwell would have us believe.”John, who lives on Folly Island, told the Mercury: “Ms Cornwell has got it wrong. It’s highly improbable that Emily was the Ripper’s victim.”Her throat was cut but the Ripper’s trademark was tearing open vital organs and sometimes taking body parts.”Sickert might have been the Ripper but he didn’t kill Emily – you’ll have to read the book to find out who did.”John, who has admitted that his fascination with the Ripper and Emily’s murder became an “obsession”, has been asked to take part in a BBC documentary on Sickert.He will take a film crew around north London and Whitechapel, in the East End, to the key sites of the Ripper attacks and the Camden Town murder. TV prankster Jeremy Beadle has already snapped up a signed copy of the The Camden Town Murder, which is available in Waterstones, Foyles, W H Smith, Barnes & Noble, Tesco and through Amazon. It is published by Mandrake.’

–

Review as featured in NW1 Magazine the groovy magazine for Camden.

The Camden Town Murder
By John Barber
‘ On the morning of 12 September, 1907, Bert Shaw returned to the lodgings he shared with his 22-year-old partner Emily (‘Phyllis’) Dimmock at 29 St Pauls Road (now Agar Grove). Unable to gain entry, he borrowed a key from his neighbour, opened the door and discovered Emily’s lifeless body lying on the bed. Her throat had been cut almost from ear to ear and her windpipe virtually severed. Her killer has never been found. The background to this gruesome murder, and its very public aftermath, is detailed in a new book, The Camden Town Murder.

Emily, a prostitute, was last seen the previous evening drinking with the principal suspect Robert Wood in what was then the Eagle public house and is now Mac’s Bar on the corner of Royal College Street and Camden Road. Wood was tried at the Old Bailey but, thanks to the efforts of Marshall Hall, England’s finest criminal defence barrister, he was acquitted on the grounds that he could not be placed at the scene of the crime and had an alibi. Although the author argues convincingly that Wood is still the most likely suspect, he does entertain other possibilities.

He has obviously carried out extensive research, and he identifies several other men who could have committed the crime, most notably the artist Walter Sickert, who must have known Emily as they both often frequented the Old Bedford Music Hall (demolished in 1969, now Bedford House, 123-133 Camden High Street), where Sickert used to sketch and paint the performers. Sickert is also suspected by many conspiracy theorists, in particular the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, as having been Jack the Ripper and also having killed Emily, although there appears to be little direct evidence that this was the case. In any event, the modus operandi of Emily’s murder differed significantly from that employed by the Ripper. However, Sickert was apparently deeply upset by her death and embarked on a series of sketches and paintings called the Camden Town Murders, the best known of which – ‘what shall we do for the rent?’ – shows a young woman lying on her bed, in exactly the position in which Emily was found by the police. This painting is on the cover of the book.

Reading about true crime can be an unhealthy pastime, as writers and publishers tend to stress the lurid and sensationalist aspects, motivated no doubt by the public’s morbid interest in such matters, and thereby increase sales. This book, however, is forensic rather than febrile in tone, and dispassionately assesses the evidence for and against the various suspects. It will be of interest to students of crime and also to those seeking an understanding of the morality and underworld of Camden life in the early 20th century.’
– Rab MacWilliam in NW1 Magazine

–Article feature in the Camden Gazette

‘Writer believes he has solved century old murder mystery’
nlnews@archant.co.uk
14 March 2007

‘Author John Barber spent years researching the book after growing up opposite the scene of the murder in what is now Agar Grove. Picture: Rob Bourne.

A murdered prostitute, a blood-stained bowl and an artist who cheated the hangman’s noose make up a 100-year-old Camden Town riddle a writer may have finally solved.

The 1907 murder of Emily Dimmock shocked the nation – especially as the murderer was never caught, although some believe that Jack the Ripper was responsible.

BERT Shaw – the partner of victim Emily Dimmock at the time of her death in 1907

Now writer John Barber – who grew up opposite the murder house in modern day Agar Grove and spent years writing The Camden Town Murder – thinks he has got to the bottom of the mystery.

He says a modern day jury would probably have convicted local artist Robert Wood – despite the fact that he was cleared of the crime by a court a century ago.

Mr Barber said: “One hundred years later it is very difficult to be sure, but with all the evidence available I have been able to point the finger at someone. Robert Wood was brilliantly defended at his trial but I think his alibi would have been shown to be false by a modern investigation.”

Mr Barber also hopes the book may bring some peace to the family of the murdered woman’s partner Bert Shaw. He said: “Bert Shaw’s family always talked about the murder in a hushed whisper. It was a dark secret but I think he had nothing to do with it. I hope the book gives a bit of peace to the family.”

Bert Shaw’s distant relation Alan Stanley – now 58 – remembers meeting his great uncle in the 1960s. He said: “In my childhood I vaguely knew there had been some sort of murder in the family. People referred to it without ever explaining what it was all about. I remember the fact that the murderer had washed his hands in a bowl and left blood-stains behind. Uncle Bert was old fashioned and always wore his suit even in the home. He was the first to come across her naked body lying with her throat cut – it must have been horrific. I don’t think anyone in the family ever thought he was the murderer.”

LORETTA LAY
– is a Specialist Detective Fiction and True Crime Bookdealer and a leading authority on Jack The Ripper.
www.laybooks.com
*****

MURDER ONE UK
– Murder One UK is an online, mail order only bookseller and a successor to the famous Murder One bookshop that traded in the heart of Charing Cross Road for over twenty years.
www.murderone.co.uk
*****

CASEBOOK
– is the Web’s largest public Jack The Ripper Archive.
www.casebook.org
*****

JACK THE RIPPER FORUMS
– The place to be for all things Ripper.
www.jtrforums.com
*****

RIPPEROLOGIST
– The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies, is available in electronic format on subscription /Email contact@ripperologist.biz
www.ripperologist.com
*****

– Haunted by the failure to catch Londonʼs most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) now heads up the notorious H Division – the toughest police district in the East End. Charged with keeping order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his men fi nd themselves fi ghting to uphold justice and the rule of law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper – is he back for another reign of terror.

The shadow of the Ripper is still felt in the neighbourhood by the vigilantes, the sensation-seeking newspaper hacks and the men who hunted – and failed to find – the notorious murderer. It seems that even though the notorious killer has disappeared, there are plenty more willing to stain the streets of Whitechapel with their victims’ blood…

Lydia Maskell was one of the original members of Bath Omphalos. She loves animals and has made a special study of cats in Ancient Egypt. Her other interests include the therapeutic and magical use of aromatics and the lore and magic of canines.

Greek and Indian sources tell of Greek and Indian sources tell of an Alexandrian Greek navigator called Hippalos. He discovered a direct route across the ocean from the Red sea, to legendary Musiris in South India. 2000 miles of open ocean in 30 days and nights. India: when the Kama Sutra was first written down. India where Buddhists and Hindus hate each other with a vengence and where mighty dynasties are embroiled in bloody war. Against this powerful backdrop the heart of Hippalos is tested to its limit as friends fight for survival and a passionate love affair grows. Hippalos’s journey, based on fact, offers us a way through the vast ocean of Indian story. You will be entertained and then initiated into the secrets of ancient India as you have never before seen it.

In South India there is a society where priests and lay people claim supernatural powers. Where a sophisticated medical system underlies a quest for physical longevity and psychic immortality.
And where arcane and sexual rituals take place that are far removed from the Brahmanic tradition.

That society is the Tamil Siddhas. In the Siddha Quest for Immortality world Tamil expert K Zvelebil offers a vivid picture of these people: their religious beliefs, their magical rites, their alchemical practices, their complex system of medicine, and their inspired tradition of poetry.

In the Poets of the Powers, Zvelebil introduced English speakers, for the first time, to the astonishing power of Siddha writing. The Siddha Quest for Immortality includes many newly-translated examples of poetry that is deeply religious but not without humour. But physical longevity was also central to Siddha belief, and fascinating chapters on Siddha medicine describe routines by which one can maintain health, and tell how drugs are created from such varied ingredients as cowdung, human urine, honey, oil, and milk.

Part of a Tantrik-Siddha Ritual

‘In the centre of a ritual circle…sits a chosen woman, completely naked, who symbolizes Devi, i.e., Sakti…caste or community is of absolutely no importance in the selection of this woman…This Sakti, thoroughly washed and perfumed all over her body with various perfumes sits on a sort of pedestal with widely spread legs so that her yoni (vulva) is well visible. The leading Siddha will kiss the yoni, and bless various non-vegetarian foodstuffs through the contact with the yoni by touching and rubbing with them the vulva of the Sakti. Then these offerings are distributed among the participants and consumed…’

The Siddha Quest for Immortality
‘While the non-Siddha proclaims that, in order to escape the wheel of birth-and-death the only course open to man is the attainment of spiritual freedom crowned by physical, bodily death, the Siddha maintains that one must overcome physical death in this life itself and ‘live forever’…the great work that lies before man is to purify one’s body and sanctify one’s life, and integrate the two…into one eternal monad, so that body and life become identical.’
The Poets of the Powers

‘Siddha writings are at once most thrilling, even sensational but at the same time the darkest and only very little-known texts in Tamil. They represent a complex and provocative puzzle: flashes of stunning intuition, knowledge, even deep wisdom as well as results of effective practice seem to be mixed with incredible naivete, hardly acceptable superstitions, and dark and amazing claims.’

Plagiarists and impostors?

‘Even Indians themselves, when raised on the niceties of early twentieth century English or Anglo-Indian culture, described the Siddhas as “plagiarists and impostors”, “eaters of opium and dwellers in the land of dreams, their conceit knowing no bounds.’

Siddha Iconoclasm
‘You begging bullocks!
In ochre robes,
with matted hair,
with water-vessels,
rosary-beads and walking sticks,
you have forsaken your women
and roam about the country wide and large
begging for a grain of boiled rice!
Idiots!’

Further extracts below:
Extract

Foreword

The Tamil Siddhas cannot be regarded as one homogenous ‘movement’ or ‘school of thought’ manifesting a unified, well-defined, uniform ideology. A great number of elements have entered into their thinking, some of them pan-Indian, some of them apparently specifically South Indian or Tamil. On the other hand, their overall ideology has, of course, several basic doctrinal tenets in common. As we shall see, some of these tenets are in amazing correspondence with the most recent developments in modern physics of post-relativity and quantum theory era. The schema of dense and subtle matter is one of those tenets: according to ultimate Siddha thought, subtle matter constitutes the inner body of man; matter is nothing but crystallized energy, and a manifestation of infinite and universal mind (‘subtle matter’ reappears in the theories of physicists of our day). An accomplished Siddha is someone who has learned to harmonize his awareness with this subtle (sub-atomic?) matter of which he is composed. The Siddha alchemist can live in the mode of constant appearance and disappearance, manifestation and dissolution, of subtle matter and energy; and all matter forms a continuum. Neither matter nor consciousness are ultimate, for both have their source in something still ‘beyond’, in Civam which can not really become object of knowledge. Hence the Siddha poet speaks often of ‘silence’:

Silence, unmoved and rising,
Silence, unmoved and sheltering,
Silence, unmoved and permanent,
Silence, unmoved and brilliant,
Silence, broad and immense like the Ganga,
Silence, unmoved and increasing,
Silence, white and shining like the Moon,
Silence, the Essence of Siva.

Gods made out of wood
Gods made out of stone
Gods made out of palmyra fronds
Gods made out of bone
Gods made out of rags
Gods made out of dung
Gods made out of saffron bags
There are no other gods
but
VOID
(Civavakkiyam 503/510)

must be stressed, however, that by this emptiness is not meant a substantive emptiness like ‘an empty box’. It is emptiness which is a plenum (more about all this will be said in subsequent chapters). And man can come into contact with this Void. How, that is precisely what the Siddhas tell us.

These, then, are, in very simplified words, some of the ultimate and basic doctrinal points common to all those thinkers, poets, alchemists and physicians designated as cittar (Siddhar, Siddhas) in Tamil India. Now, to speak of less lofty matters, the reader must be made aware that, nowadays, when it comes to Siddha medicine and medical practice, there even exist, in Madras, a government Siddha dispensary, and a government Siddha medical college. Also, let us return to what divides the Siddhas from one another; let us mention at least one of their important ‘inhomogeneities’ – the Siddha attitude to sex.

The Siddha attitude to sex often manifests features which are in mutual contrast, and thus represents a good illustration of the heterogeneous character of the Siddha ‘movement’. On the one hand there are Siddha poets who express utter disgust and revulsion towards women and any sexual activity (e. g. Pattinattar who in Potu 14 speaks of men who ‘for the sake of a cunt / perish day and night’, and in 31 mentions ‘women / who smell of their / sensuality’, whose ‘limbs stink of their discharge’). Pattinattar is not the only one, although he probably represents the most vigorous manifestation of the ascetic, stern, misogynist trend of Siddha thought. On the other hand, in drastic contrast – so at least it seems – there is an entire group of Siddha alchemist-medicine men who are obviously raised in the Tantrik tradition, and who in fact take part in rituals based on the Tantrik cakrapuja. This stream of Siddha thought and practice will be dealt with in some detail in chapter 12 of this book, but here I wish to indicate very briefly the most salient features of such Tantrik-Siddha ritual.

In the centre of a ritual circle (cakkiram) sits a chosen woman, completely naked, who symbolizes Devi, i. e. Sakti, the Primeval Energy of the Cosmos, the Goddess, and it is characteristic of the Siddha views that caste or community is of absolutely no importance either in the selection of this woman (she can be a virgin as well as a prostitute, a young Brahmin girl as well as a ripe low- caste lady), or in the gathering of the participants. This Sakti, thoroughly washed and perfumed all over her body with various perfumes (according to an exact prescription; for details cf. chapter 12), sits on a sort of pedestal with widely spread legs so that her yoni (vulva) is well visible. The leading Siddha will kiss the yoni, and bless various non-vegetarian foodstuffs through the contact with the yoni by touching and rubbing with them the vulva of the Sakti. Then these offerings are distributed among the participants and consumed. The participating men, who for five days preceding the puja had been eating meat, drinking alcoholic beverages and using aphrodisiacs according to Siddha pharmacopoeia, will naturally be in a state of high sexual arousal which must however be strictly controlled, until ritual cohabitation follows with their chosen female partners which – and this is a basic and most important requirement – must never end in ejaculation of the sperm. The Siddha tenet underlying all this holds that the enormous force which is released by controlled sexual tension must be translated from the gross physical level to the ‘subtle’ body and ultimately to the psychic level whereby one attains various siddhis or supranormal powers and ‘immortality’.

This book consists of some sixteen sections. The introductory chapter describes in broad outlines general features of Siddha medicine (since this is what the book is mostly concerned with), and in the following chapter are spelled out ideological tenets of the specific Siddha quest of immortality. Next chapter deals with basic principles and beliefs of Siddha physicians. The following section gives first a rather detailed account of Siddha materia medica and its use, and moves on to the cure prescribed for a number of various diseases. Three very brief sections follow: on Siddha yoga, daily regime, and alchemy. The following chapter is concerned with the specific Siddha techniques for the attainment of longevity and ‘immortality’. Then follows a description of some doctrinal aspects of Siddhism as reflected in contemporary medical practice, and of a visit in a Siddha dispensary in Madras. Tantrik Siddha school and Siddha attitudes to sex are dealt with next. After the conclusions, a short anthology of selected Siddha poetic texts is offered to the reader. Index of terms in precise transliteration and select bibliography close the book.

Cunnilingus according to Tantrik Siddhas
[from a late medieval text in Tamil entitled Treatise on the Arrow of Lust

First Stage
Like a cow which licks tenderly its calf
spread out your tongue broad
and lick her yoni
lapping up the juices oozing out
like a thirsty dog which laps cool water
(continues)

17 NOVEMBER 1927 – 17 JANUARY 2009
Kamil Vaclav Zvelebil, Professor Emeritus of the Universities of Chicago and Utrecht, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Professor Zvelebil was an ordained Buddhist and world-renowned expert on South Indian languages and culture. He wrote many books including The Lexicon of Tamil Literature. The Siddha Quest for Immortality makes available for the first time, secrets of Tantrik Sexual Magick and Alchemy to both scholars and general readers.

Aleister Crowley, otherwise known as the Beast 666, shared membership of the Golden Dawn with W.B. Yeats, and publishers with D.H. Lawrence. Now in a beyond-the-grave autobiography, he recounts his own vocation, his practice of sex magic, and his bruising encounters with his contemporaries.
The great magus, whose own world-conquering creed, The Book of the Law, was written in Cairo in 1904, was according to him, no murderer, but a prophet and practitioner of all kinds of sexual freedom and new magical systems.
‘I shall continue to protest my innocence as long as I have a hole in my bottom.’
The Wickedest Man in the World? Or Post-Christian Messiah? Read this book and judge for yourself.
Extract
Reviews
‘intriquing and sordidly entertaining’ – Gay Times
‘Brilliant . . . the Great Beast explaining himself in lapel-grabbing prose:’
– Simon Callow, Sunday Telegraph
‘Excellent . . . perverse, funny and at times as inexplicably moving as its subject. Recommended’
– Fortean Times
‘Probably the most fun you’ll have with a British novel all year’ – The Edge
…thanks to Snoo for a great book. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Made me laugh and cry. Excellent.’ – Sparky

‘. . . really good fun. Its not very kind to old Crow, and the language is a bit more vulgar than required (or than he would have used), but on the other hand. . . it does produce a charming caricature of Ye Great Beast that serves to perpetuate the myth. …Dear 666 would have felt flatttered… What I liked about the book, part from its jokes and the invaluable occult illustrations, is the contrast between Crowley as a human being (and egomaniac) and the Master Therion, the perfect ego-less adept he would have liked to be . . . Its the difference as between a Thelemite and a follower of Crowleyanity. Symonds’ Great Beast was almost totally obsessed with the Demon Crowley, Wilson’s novel is better balanced , it mixes the ego tripper with the Logos of the Aeon. This produces some confusion, and maybe this confusion is close to the conflicts that the real AC experienced. I suspect that he often got muddles up as to who was who in him and who cares, and put on his Great Magus Hat whenever his ego felt threatened and misunderstood. Considering that so many people are involved in the dull cult of Crowleyanity, and spend their time trying to be like the guru or wasting money collecting the master’s underpants, a critical treatment of the person Crowley, such as you dared to inflict on the long-suffering public, is an excellent and much need magickal gesture.’ – Jan Fries

Extract pages 25-31

It is time to meet Raoul Loveday.

He who was once my beloved, my Man. The year is 1918. We go inside the British Museum. The room is resplendent, a magnificent invocation of the age of the Pharoahs. You may hear my whispered voice but I shall only be ‘directing traffic’, as it were, a friendly astral presence.

Before we meet Raoul I should explain. In reality, at this moment, I was astride a fat black whore, very sensuous, three thousand miles away in New York in the heat of summer. If we stuck strictly with Greenwich Mean Time, she would be squealing delightedly as I slipped a cornucopia of products from the local ice house into her vas nefandum. But; – by virtue of my Parker pen, I am hovering here in the British Museum, in the Egyptian room, a ghostly Virgil, to guide you towards your meeting.

Come with me, oh sensation-seeking novitiates, past Babylonian lions, and giant relics of vast statues of the Pharoahs of Egypt. Let me move you past the mummies in their bitumen-soaked linen wraps, the golden scarabs and riddling sphinxes. Here a giant arm, there a huge disembodied head. Shelley caught fallen greatness in his web here over a hundred years ago. And yet, what is a hundred years to Ra and Osiris?

Sunlight shines through the boards, shafting into the exotic gloom. Peace has arrived at last, but the windows are still boarded up after Zeppelin damage.The atmosphere in here is of dark, brooding intensity. Footsteps on stone echo round the high ceilings. Sounds of hackney horse-drawn cabs filter through from outside, and an infrequent intrusive motor car.

A young couple are examining the exhibits. They have the glow of youth upon them. The young man is tale, pale and excitable, with flopping dark hair, his movements feline and attractive, the woman, short, older than him, brassy and self-assured. Yes! It is Raoul Loveday and his wife. This way, dear boy. Come and claim your dread destiny. The Museum is where your die will be cast.

Raoul is so overcome by the atmosphere breathed out by the relics, he cannot understand how anyone can not be equally moved. But Betty does not, cannot ever share his sublime thoughts.

Raoul’s head is ablaze with the laws of numbers that underpin the firmament. Betty is thinking about the impression she made on his parents at their wedding. The age difference, do you see, must have been mentioned. Her being so much older than him, already tweaking and bleaching her tiny moustache, pulling in her flaccid stomach as she tummocks in the altogether for boys from the Slade Art School, who are all wearing berets and green corduroy smocks, and worrying whether they have, or do not have, the clap-

Betty and Raoul. Alone in the British Museum. With me, Like Raoul’s Holy Guardian Angel, hovering above.

How did Raoul find me? In search of a mentor, he had written to me about the laws of magic in mathematics before the war, and I courteously returned his schoolboy enquiries by outlining some paths of exploration her could pursue relating to the numeric structure of the ‘Qabal, and the relationship of p to the Sephiroth. We met, after the war, which as I am not afraid to say, I spent in America. I was almost too old to fight, certainly too wise to drown like a dog in Flanders mud. In any case, my services as a secret agent for the British Government having been refused,21 I had a mind to take America by storm.

When I came back to England, Raoul had grown into a man. But he had taken ether under my supervision. When he married Betty, she made him swear he would not touch me, or drugs again. Betty came from Soho, in London, and the prevailing ‘wisdom’ of artists models and tarts alike (Indistinguishable categories around the likes of Augustus John23) was that boys like Raoul had to be kept on the straight and narrow, or, in shopgirl parlance, they went ‘to the bad’.

I will say one thing for Betty. She was never backward about supporting the pair of them, using her body. She was close to being that impossibility, an honest whore. Her cocaine intake had been stupendous, but she had pulled away from it.

‘There was once a religion which could have united mankind. We have to rediscover the source of inspiration.’ Raoul’s whisper to her in that echoing room falls on stony ground. Betty’s scornful rasp would have come back something like-

‘I thought Mister Crowley had the secret already and went to America to keep it safe.’ Never mind I was in two minds about getting involved in stupidest epidemic of hostilities in history. By the end of the conflict, The War Office in England had been bullied into conscripting anyone under forty five. In Betty’s view if I had joined the Clerkenwell cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse, it would at least have got rid of me.

Raoul had told her that I wanted to work in Europe, and that I had plans for a idealistic community which he wanted to join. She of course sneered.

Raoul related to me how the tragedy snowballed after that. Betty had sneered first at me, then at Anubis. Anubis is the jackal-headed god, with a human body, who ferries the souls of the dead to the underworld. Anubis sees both life and death. There was a fine statue of him there. He is a kindly psychopomp unlikely to take offence.

Betty’s third slight, which wound up destiny irrevocably, was to a priestess of Amon Ra, a most powerful lord of life and death, and unable, if you wish for my opinion, to take such a thing lightly.

According to Raoul, they were standing before the imposing mummy of the handmaiden to Amon Ra.

Betty began making flippant remarks, while poor Raoul was stuttering that he wanted the priestess to bless their wedding. Not even the high god, the priestess. Raoul was always humble.

Then Betty did this foolish thing. Her insult was to thumb her nose at the mummy, in a deliberate fashion.

Raoul begged her not to do it, to apologise.

Naturally, Amon- Ra could not overlook this insult to his handmaiden.

‘What’s wrong?’ Betty said. The words dried in his mouth, he told me. He could not speak, and all he could think of was numbers. Behind her, Raoul could see a boarded up door with a message on it, which boded ill. It read NO ENTRY. ZEPPELIN DAMAGE. Just then Betty, undaunted by her new husband, to cap her insolence, stuck her tongue out as far as it would go, at the handmaiden of Amon Ra. Sometimes it is necessary to arrest insolent ignorance at the point of issue, or it breeds pestilence. If I had been in Raoul’s shoes, wed to Betty, I would have fetched her a smack in the chops that would have carried her across the room, and put her out of modelling work for a week. Raoul, of course, being Raoul, kept his hands to himself. ‘Betty! Stop!’ Raoul whimpered.

The tongue, stuck out like Betty stuck it out is a particular insult to the Egyptian Eternals. For the old Egyptian language – (lost to us now, alas, we only have debased hieroglyphics) – is the closest we may ever get to the Words of the Creator.

The Tongue shares the blame for The Fall. Sometimes I believe I will meet one of the Secret Chiefs24 who will address me in that divine language. I speak prayers in Enochian,25 but the Highest Angelic discourse has not yet been reclaimed.

– To return to our thickened plot – Betty, having offended the gods with her tongue, (Hers went out a particularly long way, I noticed when they came to Cefalù) turned on one polished heel, like the slut she was, and walked smartly away. Her footsteps echoed. Raoul cried-

‘Betty – come back and apologise – please.’ Of course she did nothing of the sort, but continued titupping out of the room.

Raoul turned, full of foreboding, to the statue of Amon Ra himself. He sank to his knees to the stone god. The foolish boy tried to bargain, to protect The Model, his slatternly new bride. So much charcoal had been crushed by so many ‘artists’ depicting Betty’s plumply endowed bush it is surprising the area had any mystery left in it. But Raoul was young. Like the doomed youths who went ‘over the top’ for Horatio Bottomley and the rest of the war profiteers, he took it upon himself to expiate others’ crime with his own blood-offering. Raoul bleated to Amon Ra- ‘Don’t take it out on her. If there must be a judgement, great Lord, let it be on me – on me!’

Naturally, Amon Ra took him at his word.

Later, Raoul answered my summons to the Abbey, Betty reluctantly accompanying him. London, Dover, Calais, Paris, Palermo. Betty was spared but Raoul was called, and was buried by me outside the cemetery of Cefalu, with a huge crowd of Sicilians ogling the goings-on. Subsequently there was a great brouhaha in the Beaverbrook press about a ‘Satanic’ burial by the light of babies being burned, in unconsecrated ground. The same old lies that Christians have told about Jews for two thousand years.

The truth is, Raoul could not possibly have been buried inside the cemetery, he was not a Catholic. In fact, Raoul’s soul had a fine send-off. We danced and sang and threw libations. The robes of the Abbey came in for applause from the crowds, who were openly disappointed when the magnificent show came to an end. It was the frankness and sexual openness of the community women which really touched the imaginations of the crowds of short, greasy Sicilian men. Even Betty had to admit that the funeral touched the heartstrings. If I had not been expelled from Italy immediately after, I would have been able to staff any number of Abbeys from amongst the local population. I sent Raoul off with my very best poem, one we used to recite almost daily in our rituals together, my ‘Hymn to Pan’. If you cannot find a copy in your local library, do feel free to make your own Hymn.

Snoo Wilson is a writer and playwright who presented an apologia for Aleister Crowley in the TV series ‘Without Walls’. His previous novels are Spaceache and Inside Babel (Chatto). His play, More Light, about the heretic Giordano Bruno, is published by Mandrake of Oxford. His latest project is a satyrical novel, The Works of Melmont, based on the life of Robert Maxwell and available from Mandrake.

A scientist casts new light on psi-phenomena, such as clairvoyance, telepathy, and ‘out of the body experiences’ in this book. He presents an exciting new theory which explains such phenomena, linking the recently discovered ‘Shadow Matter’ world of physics with parapsychology. The author builds on theories until now discussed only in academic journals, but the book is accessible to non-scientists. Shadow Matter & Psychic Phenomena also offers over 60 fascinating case histories of ‘psychic’ experience. Essential reading for scientists, occultists, and anyone interested in the paranormal.

‘The idea that some non-ordinary form of matter can explain psi is one I think may be worth following up, as you have done…Purely as phenomenology, your ideas may be very valuable.’ – Professor Brian D Josephson FRS (Nobel Laureate)

‘a stimulating attempt to provide a scientific and rigorous explanation of psi-phenomena.’
– David Lorimer in Network (newsletter of Scientific and Medical network)

‘I heartily recommend this book to all investigators of paranormal phenomena and also to other scientists who would like to read a carefully written summary of the evidence for such phenomena.’
– Ian Stevenson, (University of Virginia) in Journal of Parapsychology

Praise for his earlier title

‘The idea that some non-ordinary form of matter can explain psi is one I think may be worth following up, as you have done…Purely as phenomenology, your ideas may be very valuable.’ – Professor Brian D Josephson FRS (Nobel Laureate)

‘A stimulating attempt to provide a scientific and rigorous explanation of psi-phenomena.’
– David Lorimer in Network (newsletter of Scientific and Medical network)

‘I heartily recommend this book to all investigators of paranormal phenomena and also to other scientists who would like to read a carefully written summary of the evidence for such phenomena.’
– Ian Stevenson, (University of Virginia) in Journal of Parapsychology

—

A reader’s personal response is reproduced below:

A Reader’s Letter

‘Dear Dr. Wassermann,

Having read your book, “Consciousness and Near Death Experiences”, I wondered if you might be interested in my experience: I had a NDE, an OBE and was seen by a doctor in a different location, all at the same time.

Aged 28, in […] Hospital, I underwent extensive surgery to my spine. All went well but because of having to be immobilized for a long time, I became ill, with, I believe, a post operative thrombosis and also a urinary infection. I did not feel aware of being ill, although I was in pain and felt “hot and cold”. I found myself above the bed, looking down at someone in the bed – I did not at first recognise it as being me. I then thought how well the surgery had worked, because I could move about.

I floated to the other end of the ward, to see a lady, M[. . . ], who had had two hip replacements – this was a new operation in 1965, and I was concerned for her. I noticed that she had a white cotton seersucker nightgown, patterned with little bunches of roses: on her left sleeve was a price tag from Marks & Spencer’s, for 29/11 (old money); what troubled me was that the metal clip was still on the ticket, and I was afraid that M[…] might be hurt by the sharp clip. I tried to make her hear me, but could not do so. When I tried to touch her, to draw her attention, my hand went through her. I suddenly had the thought that I was out of my body – and probably either dead or to about to die, and I think I panicked slightly.

I felt suddenly comfortable, and found myself in a little boat, floating along a shaft of light that shone over water, towards what appeared to be an island, where the light had its origin. I could hear wonderful music. I felt no pain, no distress, and was feeling very peaceful. I met no one, but could hear singing. A sudden jerk brought me back above my bed, from where I could see myself and the young doctor who was looking after me, another doctor and some nurses. They had some machinery, and were about to put orangey yellow round things on my chest – there was an audible bang, and I was back in my body, looking up at my doctor, and asking why he had brought me back, as I was now in pain again.

Later, the doctor told me that he had been off duty, and in a public house with friends, when he had seen me, “Floating up above the optics, waving and saying “Bye, T[..], I’m going now”” He had left at once, hurried to the hospital, to my ward, where he asked after me. Told that no-one had heard a “peep out of her all night” he discovered that I was in fact “going now” – and had summoned the resuscitation unit.

What has interested me is that in all the reports that I have subsequently read of NDEs and OBEs, no one has been seen, by another person, while they were experiencing their NDE or OBE – in my case, the doctor was not even in the hospital when he became aware of me – and I was not aware that I had “contacted” him, although we had found much in common in the short time that we had known each other, so there was some friendly rapport. He stayed with me for many hours, after my resuscitation, arguing with me about literature, to stop me from “going away again” – he knew that I would stay to argue with him if he told me that Shelley wrote rubbish!

My first experience of any psychic phenomena was in the summer of 1938, before I was a year old (I was born [ . . .]) when I was in my cot by my mother’s bed, with a family party going on in the next room: I saw a lady and gentleman billow through the wall – I began to scream, because I already knew that people used doors, and while I could not explain, my mother must have realised that I was scared, because she brought a night light into the room, although it was summer and still light outside ( she invariably put me to bed at 6pm, until I was six or seven years old). I continued to see and hear people “who were not really there”, but learned not to say anything about it, until, in my late 40s, I started to attend a Spiritualist Church, where my “gift” was recognised and I was not made to feel guilty – I now work as a “Medium”, although never for money or reward of any kind. I am sure that many people have psychic experiences, but, like me, they do not talk about such things because such things are considered to be either unhealthy or insane.

Finally, I would like to thank you for your book, which I find very interesting, fair-minded, and helpful. It is good to find that Science is catching up with a very ordinary human experience!

With sincere respects

S […]

PS I should have added that the price tag on M […]’s nightgown was confirmed as correct.’

In 1993 I published a novel kind of theory of psychic phenomena in a book entitled Shadow Matter & Psychic Phenomena. Although I devoted a whole chapter to the issue of possible survival of the human personality after bodily death, I did not go remotely far enough. Contrary to common-sense, it seems physically quite possible that an important component of each of us survives death. It is a part of this component which during life and death carries our memories and our ability to think, feel etc.

Perhaps a valuable guide to the possible machinery of death and dying might be obtained by attempts to elucidate the conceivable mechanisms of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). Various people have studied these for many years. My own theorising begins with a critical reappraisal of some of these ideas on NDEs. In the course of the argument I hope to persuade the reader of the advantages of a theory based in the new physics of Shadow Matter.

Born in Leipzig, his family came to Britain in 1936. A Biologist and Philosopher, he graduated from Queen Mary College, University of London with first class Honours in Mathematics, and then obtained a Ph.D. in Quantum Mechanics from the University of London. After working for a while in Theoretical Acoustics (horn design) with Tannoy Products, he was invited by (the later) Nobel Laureate Sir Neville Mott to join his department at Bristol as Research Assistant to Prof. Herbert Fröhlich FRS.

In his career the author did research in Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Optics, Theoretical Developmental Biology, Theory of Evolution. Biophilosophy, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mind. He published many papers in prestigious journals (subject to peer review) and seven books. A Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and was elected in 1989 as a Fellow of the Institute of Biology and awarded a DSc from the University of London.

Professor Wasserman developed a major theory of paranormal phenomena which was published in the journal Nature, and later in book form as Shadow Matter And Psychic Phenomena and the sequel Consciousness & Near Death Experiences.

Ranging across both published and anecdotal evidence, Pharmakon traces the story of drug use as a means of self-exploration. By examining apparently simple questions such as ‘what is a drug?’, Pharmakon deconstructs and reconstructs the idea of drug experience. Experiences that the author believes are fundamental to the process of self-actualisation and learning.

Naturally though this book discusses all sorts of things that are currently illegal in many nations the author would never wish to encourage anyone to break the Law. Moreover since this book contains information about how human beings can fly like birds, become transformed into animals and explore the farthest reaches of inner space it is, quite clearly, a work of fiction.

Julian Vayne is an occultist who has written on a number of esoteric subjects (witchcraft, the tarot and the sociology of contemporary Paganism). This book is aimed at both the general reader and those who are interested in the use of drugs in a spiritual context.

Delving into areas as diverse as philosophy and neurochemistry, this is a book that in both style and content seeks to invent a new understanding of drugs in culture….

Review
Pharmakon: Drugs and the imagination, by Julian Vayne
The philosopher’s stoned
By Gary Lachman
Published: 24 December 2006

‘Talking about your drug experiences is like talking about your dreams: it may be personally rewarding, but for others it’s a bore. As with dreams, the insights, visions and revelations that accompany some drug experiences can provide new perspectives on your life and help you to “know yourself”. The person on the receiving end of your dope stories, however, more times than not stifles an impatient “So what?” and wonders when you’ll get to the point. This is the paradoxical character of drug experiences: their profound subjectivity is a barrier to communication.

A handful of writers, De Quincey, Huxley, Burroughs and a few others, managed to cross this threshold and master the art of “trip-lit”. But most accounts of psychedelic journeys into inner space boil down to a less than informative “Awesome, man”. This may let us know that the voyage meant a lot to you, but it still leaves us in the dark as to what was so meaningful about it.

Julian Vayne argues that drugs can be an effective tool in self-exploration, and provides some useful theoretical scaffolding in understanding exactly what a “drug experience” is. Vayne argues that the mainstream materialist view of drugs is incomplete, and he makes clear that the chemical analysis of various substances like LSD, Ecstasy, cannabis and other popular items is only half the story. The importance of “set and setting” and our cultural expectations about exactly what a particular drug is supposed to do are equally crucial; our imagination and anticipation about what we will encounter after ingesting a magic mushroom are at least as significant as the psilocybin housed in the fungus itself. Drug experiences, Vayne contends, are learnt. They aren’t simply a matter of an automatic chemical reaction between my bloodstream and the toxin I’ve introduced to it.

He makes a similar point about how the same drug may have very different effects on different people. A lump of hash may lift a Baudelaire into poetic reverie, but the same lump may only sink the rest of us into befuddled sleep. LSD advocates in the 1960s made a similar discovery when it became painfully clear that taking acid didn’t automatically make people more spiritual and enlightened. The trip, good or bad, is as much in ourselves as in the drug.

Although Vayne has written several books on occult subjects, the occult or magical sensibility informing the book is curiously faint. The tone is academic, and a great part of the book is devoted to the mechanics of how drugs interact with our neurochemistry. He’s also at pains to anchor drug experiences in the post-modern discourse of transgression. This makes for a text in which Derrida turns up almost as often as Aleister Crowley. It’s refreshing to find occultism rubbing shoulders with other viewpoints, but the narrative is sometimes burdened with digressions on the Derridian “trace” and other notions.

Vayne’s most interesting insights come with his discussion of autism and schizophrenia as two poles of human consciousness: one an impenetrable contraction of the ego, the other a debilitating exposure to the chaos of the unconscious. Vayne makes a good argument that, rather than exceptional conditions, autism and schizophrenia are the extremes between which our ‘normal’ consciousness fluctuates; drugs for him are a means of compensating for imbalances between the two. Like many writers on mystical subjects, Vayne sees western culture as veering too much into an ego-bound autism. Hence the virtue of hallucinogens in providing a kind of controlled schizophrenia to even things out.

There are also some howlers. Theophile Gautier and the other members of the Club des Haschischins ate their cannabis, they didn’t smoke it. Julian Jaynes was a psychologist, not a historian. And I imagine that the “occultist W B Leadbeater” is an amalgam of W B Yeats and C W Leadbeater. If you’re arguing that drugs can be a tool in self-actualisation, it’s a good idea not to provide material for jokes about how stoned you were when you put your book together.

From Mandrake Speaks #100

‘A well researched and informative look at a variety of popular and not-so-well-known drugs. He deals with how they interact with our minds and bodies both chemically and psychologically, and how we perceive substances on a personal and society-wide scale. The similarities discussed between some drug experiences and some mental illnesses may lead to different viewpoints on both. Liberally sprinkled with folklore and anecdotes, Pharmakon examines the use of drugs in self-exploration employing a knowledgeable, yet down-to-earth approach that’s interesting and readable.’

”Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick gives the beginner and experienced practitioner alike a modern, 21st century view into the powerful and often misunderstood magical current called ‘Chaos Magick’. Written in a clear and easily accessible style it examines the theory behind many techniques used in magical, artistic, religious and scientific systems of thought; then links and applies them towards desired goals. Separated into two volumes the book can be used by the reader as a workbook with rituals, techniques and exercises to be followed, as a window into contemporary magical thought at the turn of the century or simply as a rollercoaster of a good read! However you choose to use it, ts book will leave you feeling positive, inspired and ready to apply any of the methods presented to your own life.”

REVIEW

”we cannot recommend this book to anybody who is frightened of magic, of self-discovery or of adventure; to anybody who wants ritual experiences that are absolutely risk-free and have a guaranteed result; to anybody whose concept of ceremony depends on the provision of scripts for all participants, carefully typed out and enclosed in polythene wrappers; to anybody who believes that magical practices should follow set traditions, without mixing ideas from different ages or cultures; to anybody who believes that human beings are firmly subordinated to deities and must do their will; and to anybody whose favourite words of condemnation for others are ‘irresponsible’ or ‘self-indulgent’. Above all, I cannot recommend it to anybody without a sense of humour. Anybody else should love it: it provides an experience of ritual that is energetic, fresh, investigative, exciting and fun, in a completely individual way.’
Professor Ronald Hutton

MORE REVIEWS

”If you think ritual magic is about drawing pentagrams in blood and sacrificing your neighbour’s cat – if, that is, you think about it at all – this book will come as a surprise. Not too many books on magic – or magick, the authors’ preferred spelling, which the notorious Aleister Crowley adopted to differentiate the true art from tawdry prestidigitation – boast of a ritual to “stop time” which involves baking cookies. Or suggest making a talisman into a fridge magnet. Or advise a game of Twister to set the mood. Or link Jean Luc Godard, Jacques Lacan and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to acquiring the Knowledge and Conversation of your Holy Guardian Angel. It’s also true that not many envision the dark Hindu goddess Kali as P J Harvey wearing a T-shirt that says “lick my legs” or offer exercises to achieve multiple orgasms – male and female.

If this sounds like a spoof, that’s understandable: while the authors are serious and dedicated practitioners, they have the key occult insight that when humour is lacking, all magic fails, and they take a decidedly light-handed (or, in their terminology, “empty-handed”) approach to what can too often be a dreary, sanctimonious affair. The “chaos magick” of the tide emerged in the late 1980s, when, like practically everything else, occultism was infected with the post- modernism bug. Jettisoning the cumbersome apparatus of traditional practice, and blending as many styles and belief systems as desired, chaos magick is about using your imagination and whatever is at hand in order to “engage with mystery.”

Devotees can find its origin in the work of the 19th-century French ex-Socialist-tumed-Kabbalist Eliphas Levi, who boiled down the real machinery of magic to the will and imagination. Where earlier mages fixated on a neurotic obsession with the minutiae of demonic names and the exact times to invoke them, Levi argued that all this was merely a means of focusing the magician’s own powers. Chaos magicians took Levi’s lead and ran with it: they’re more concerned with exploring their own creativity than with getting it right, and would rather invent their own spirits than lose sleep worrying about the appropriate one to petition. This book is a collection of rituals, accounts and reflections on how magick can invest any humdrum life with some new perspectives and, above all, fun.

Although clearly not for everyone, unlike many books on the subject, this one’s readable and the authors have a knack for the catchy phrase. “Love,” they tell us, “is as ubiquitous as the curvature of space.” In one account of a ritual invoking the aforementioned Kali, the participants call out “Hear us oh pork chop champion of the oppressed.” There’s also a personal tone that’s appealing. These magicians come across as very likeable chaps who are as concerned with having a family and a nice home as they are with exploring the profundities of existence. Does it work? Well, as any chaos magician would answer “There’s only one way to find out.”
Gary Lachman, 17th, JULY, 2005, in THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY.
Gary Lachman has written many popular books on occulture, including, The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams published by Dedalus.

—–
Review from Danny Lowe on Phil Hine’s website

”It’s been over 25 years since the first Chaos Magick book was published (Pete Carroll’s Liber Null – even if the first edition didn’t use the term). It’s a current which has been hailed as revolutionary, and pronounced dead several times (again in this book, in fact). Can a magical approach of such uncertain status have anything new to say, long out of its adolescence and stumbling towards middle age? I guess this book is fairly placed to answer that question.Unusually, this is two books in one, with sections from Julian Vayne and Greg Humphries respectively. I felt this was the first strength of the book, as multiple authors suggest a diversity of viewpoints, avoiding the trap of asserting a single, solitary “one right way”. The first section begins with an erudite introduction to the last century or so of Western Magick taking in Eliphas Levi, Crowley, Austin Spare and the innovations of the Chaos current. This is followed by four accounts of the authors’ involvement in several different rituals. As might be expected from a chaos magician, an eclectic variety of approaches is given, with material deriving from Voodoun and Tantra alongside some more freeform approaches. However, surprisingly (depending on whose books you’ve been reading) we’re given more than raw technique. Each of the sections is reasonably lengthy and more than just a “ritual rubric” – importantly, we’re given context, in both the background and results of the rituals entered into, as opposed to a “now do this”, nuts n’ bolts approach. The “backstage” of these rituals takes in variously film-making, a punch-up, chats with kids and contemplations of mortality and fatherhood, amongst other things.

The second half of the book comes has 3 sections – Abstract, Theory and Practicum. Again, the personal and descriptive style comes to the fore, weaving an account of a love affair in with a description of a long term evocation. This style – again, the context – in both halves of the book, felt to me very much what it is like to actually stop reading and get down to doing magick – to take those tentative steps, and eventually to allow yourself to be caught up, inspired. To me, this is the real strength of this book, magick is shown as an involving, creative act, something that touches all areas of life, all concerns – it doesn’t just stop at the edge of the circle.

The remaining two sections of the books second half give “bones” to the descriptive “flesh”, giving details of theory and technique respectively. With regard to the former, I particularly liked the authors’ description of the act of storytelling – addressing the ways in which we weave narratives around ourselves continuously and suggesting that we can step into new, empowering stories. The “technical ” section gives details of various ideas borrowed and plundered, in true chaos magick style – NLP, the works of Mantak Chia, spontaneous art and the Holy Guardian Angel. “Plundered” they may be, but here I feel that they add up to more than the sum of their parts. This section contains much that could be bent to one’s own design.

Now, I didn’t like everything about this book – at moments I found the style a bit …breathless, and not all the rituals were to my taste – but this is a matter of just that, taste. A more serious criticism, one that can be applied to chaos magick in general, arose when reading the section on Tantric ritual – I wondered, was the symbolism here just a cool sounding gestalt, or had it been lived, felt and thought through? I’d argue for the latter over the former anytime. It’s this kind of relentless eclecticism in CM that can feel like a lack of engagement, a kind of frothy post-modern shallowness. However, turning back to the introduction, I was pleased to find this statement, regarding contemporary practice: “depth and diversity seem to be the predominant approach rather than polymorphous paradigms with a few key principles”. This is a sentiment I heartily agree with. To be eclectic does not necessarily equate with being superficial.

Overall, then, I found this an enjoyable and rewarding work with much to inspire, imitate (and rip off). I was left unsure whether chaos magick was alive or dead (and to be totally honest, I don’t really care).- however, I am sure that people are continuing to practise exciting and creative magick, under whatever banner.”

”Many years ago your editor had a short conversation with the author of this book at the Aquarian Festival in London when he was still a teenager. He was asking how he could join a coven or a magical lodge and my advice was that he had to wait a few years. At the time some people dismissed him as a precocious brat, but the passing of time has proved that judgement wrong.

His latest book is a selection of ‘personal experiences, insights and challenges woven throughout with the golden thread of magick’ and they are mostly based on the talks he has given over the years since he was a wunderkind. They range from Crowley as a shaman to English witchcraft and macumba, green politics and druidry, to drugs and magick. Highly entertaining stuff.”

Magick Works by Julian Vayne,
Reviewed by Mike Howard in The Cauldron,
issue 131, February 2009.

Julian Vayne has been involved with the magickal world for over 20 years. He has published numerous articles, led a variety of esoteric workshops and courses and is a prominent figure in contemporary British occultism. His interests include drugs and magick, permaculture and the politics of sustainability, teaching and graphic art. He lives in Devon where he tends his newly planted orchard.
website: theblogofbaphomet.com

Ray Sherwin, born in 1952 in Yorkshire, England, is an English occult author and publisher. Together with Peter J. Carroll, he is one of the originators of the system of magical discipline called chaos magic.

In the late 1970s, he began publishing a magazine called The New Equinox, an irregular journal dealing with Thelemic magick, chaos magic and related subjects. He developed chaos magic theory and early rituals.

In 1978, he co-founded the Illuminates of Thanateros with Carroll, later publishing Carroll’s book, Liber Null. Also during 1978, Sherwin wrote and published The Book of Results. These two books, Liber Null and The Book of Results, were the first books written on the topic of chaos magic.

He is also the author of the magical texts The Theatre of Magick and Strange Smell in the Car.
(from Wikipedia)

Charlotte Rodgers is a non denominational magickal practitioner and an animist, and The Bloody Sacrifice is the story of her work with blood. It chronicles her use of road kill and blood in art, ritualised scarification and tattoo work, and the use of venous and menstrual blood in magick. Also included are Charlotte’s interviews with tattoo artists; priests from belief systems which utilise blood sacrifice; artists who use their own HIV positive blood as a medium; and those who use mortifications and body modification to effect changes in consciousness and self.

All here share a common bond of talent combined with an ability to articulate their beliefs. For example Louis Martinie, a priest in the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Martinie has integrated his Tibetan Buddhist beliefs into his Voodoo practice and in doing so shows how personal spiritual evolution can effect change within a syncretic religion. As a blood related illness affected various parts of Charlotte’s life, she was given a chance to explore blood ritual in a very different way. Documenting this part of her journey gives an understanding of AIDS, HIV and HCV, and its effect on spirituality and contemporary blood rites.

Blood Ritual, with all its history, baggage and dangers holds a power to create change. Whether this power is held within blood and how much impact is created merely by our perception is for the reader to decide. The Bloody Sacrifice is an honest, modern and thought provoking personal insight into an ancient aspect of our spirituality and creativity.

The Bloody Sacrifice. Charlotte Rodgers (Mandrake).
I opened The Bloody Sacrifice with more than a wee bit of trepidation. I knew I was not going to come across anything silly or self-indulgent, as the writer of this book is far too intelligent for that. What I found were open, honest and at times profound realisations that the author had come to through her exploration of blood, body, ritual and art. The interviews in the book are varied, relevant and very interesting. But, bar a couple of them, I wanted to hear more of the author’s voice, of her experiences and her conclusions. Rodgers is a natural priestess, regardless of what magical path she chooses to take or has taken; she has a natural capacity to connect deeply with inner world beings and learn directly, for both good and bad, from them. The main issue I was looking for, which would be guaranteed to show me if this person was switched on enough to actually truly work in this field, appeared almost immediately. Such paths into these areas are littered with unfortunate fools who have mired themselves in parasitical and low-life entanglements with inner beings, which effectively ensure that they go no further into the depths of magical realms. Not this author – she saw the traps immediately and neatly sidestepped them, learning naturally as she went deeper into the mysteries of power. Charlotte Rodgers has a powerful, clear and magical voice that I hope we will hear much more from in the future.
Highly recommended.
Josephine McCarthy – The Cauldron #140, May 2011.

Eric Ratcliffe was born in 1918 at Teddington, Middlesex, saw military service in World War 2 as an ammunition examiner in the ‘Blitz’ in London before a posting to India. His scientific career includes many research papers on thermal conductivity. He founded and edited Ore Magazine, with Brian Louis Pearce as advisory associate.

His credo is opposed to mainstream material poetry and rooted in belief of an after-life. Myth, legend and ancient British history play a large part in his themes.

His poems Anthropos and Fire in the Bush : poems 1955-1992, both published by University of Salzburg Press. Reviewer have said of Fire in the Bush:

‘His poetry is a mystical celebration of life, remote and unearthly’- RICHMOND AND TWICKENHAM TIMES

…’vision in which Elemental presences are more real than so-called reality…it is in the company of Kathleen Raine and Charles Williams that Ratcliffe is to be considered’ – TEARS IN THE FENCE

‘Like the phantom arm that recovered Excalibur from the marsh, Ratcliffe plunges deep into the azure mire of prehistoric and pre-conscious history and surfaces clutching a handful of alchemical gems – chantoyant, crystalline and imperishable’- – ABRAXAS

David Rankine is an author who has been practicing magick for 25 years, and is best known for his lively lectures and workshops. He has been involved with a wide variety of magickal groups and traditions,and draws on his extensive experience to convey the essence of magick in simple terms.

In this collection of poems and mini-sagas, Parry narrates the final journey taken by Caliban from a lesbian wedding in Liverpool, back to a London which doesn’t exist. Along the way, concepts of Saxon Witchcraft, Radical traditionalism and English ethnicity are discussed as the author unfolds his vision of an endlessly benevolent Spirit world.

David William Parry was born in Hampshire in 1958. After receiving a degree in religious studies from King’s College, London, he continued his theological research at Heythrop College. By profession he teaches literature and language. Since 1996 he has also given regular public lectures on metaphysical poetry, occultism and the problems of semantic theory. He lives with his partner in Clapham and visits Poland whenever the opportunity presents itself.

‘Joe climbed out of the hole into the gray light of a stormy afternoon. Nothing was going as planned. He still hadn’t gotten his girlfriend, the goddess, into bed.

The aliens never arrived and Elvis hadn’t returned.

Up on the stage, robed magicians toting automatic weapons called down unspeakable things from the sky. A crowd of a million people was beginning to riot. And Joe knew that it was up to him, the most famous man in the world, to save the day and bring forth the Great Purple Hoo-Ha – if he could only figure out what the heck it was.’

‘As blatant propaganda, The Great Purple Hoo-Ha is funnier than Catholicism and slightly less disgusting than ads for colonic irrigation.’
– Ivan Stang,
Church of the Subgenius
www.subgenius.com

‘A surreal, submodalicious page turner that will have you leaping from the written words to your own life in a joyous celebration and an aching wish for your own Hoo-Ha.’
-Donald Michael Kraig,
author of Modern Magick and The Resurrection Murders

”From a magicko-religious point of view I’d say, ‘The Great Purple Hoo-Ha proves that changing Perception is the Great Work’. From a reader’s perspective I’d say, ‘It’s like Stranger in a Strange Land except much funnier and with hotter sex.’ From a friend’s perspective I’d say, ‘Dude, you should buy this!'”
– Don Webb,
author of Aleister Crowley: The Fire and the Force and Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path

‘Farber’s writing is a joyride through the psyche. Absurdity and the internal workings of our own beliefs are less than a hair’s width apart – and Farber illustrates this with inimitable style, humor, and a kitschy sense of self- referential pseudo-realism.’
– LaSara Firefox Allen, MPNLP,
Developer of Gratitude Games and author of Sexy Witch
lasaraallen.com

‘Joe had a drinking problem. The possible demise of his television talk show and the end of his career had tilted a very big bottle of Old Mystery into his guts.

Now he was having trouble telling where the hallucinations ended and reality began. Had the mysterious young man with the cat – whom nobody else could see – really granted him a magical wish for fame and fortune?

Were the sex-obsessed cultists he was investigating on the show really bringing on the End of the World? Where did the sentient cream-filled pastries come from? Who was the Most Disgusting Rock Star Ever?

And, more importantly, would Joe ever get his new girlfriend, the Goddess, into bed?’

‘As blatant propaganda, The Great Purple Hoo-Ha is funnier than Catholicism and slightly less disgusting than ads for colonic irrigation.’
— Ivan Stang,
Church of the Subgenius

‘A surreal, submodalicious page turner that will have you leaping from the written words to your own life in a joyous celebration and an aching wish for your own Hoo-Ha.’
— Donald Michael Kraig,
author of Modern Magick and The Resurrection Murders.

”From a magicko-religious point of view I’d say, ‘The Great Purple Hoo-Ha proves that changing Perception is the Great Work’. From a reader’s perspective I’d say, ‘It’s like Stranger in a Strange Land except much funnier and with hotter sex.’ From a friend’s perspective I’d say, ‘Dude, you should buy this!'”
— Don Webb, author of Aleister Crowley: The Fire and the Force and Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path.

‘Farber’s writing is a joyride through the psyche. Absurdity and the internal workings of our own beliefs are less than a hair’s width apart – and Farber illustrates this with inimitable style, humor, and a kitschy sense of self- referential pseudo-realism.’
– LaSara Firefox Allen, MPNLP,
Developer of Gratitude Games and author of Sexy Witch

Best New Horror 2003
from The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: vol. 14.
Edited by Stephen Jones, 2003 Edition, ISBN 0786712376.

They raped me and ate my friend alive.’ Thus starts this work of erotic horror fiction filled with ‘sacrilege, blasphemy, and crime’–written in a style that is part H. P. Lovecraft, part Marquis de Sade, and part Octave Mirbeau–The Cannibal Within is literally ‘wet with sin, slippery with blood, and slimy with fornication.’

The novel’s central character is part Lara Croft part Sarah Connor. She/We has a choice: the evil may be patiently borne or savagely resisted.

We may think we are special–holy, honored, valued–god’s chosen primates–but that is a fraud. The dupes of superhuman forces, we are misfits and abominations. We have no higher purpose –no savior god died for our sins–we exist, only because our masters are infatuated with our meat.

‘The Earth is a farm,’ wrote Charles Fort.

‘We are someone else’s property.’

‘–no savior god died for our sins–we exist, only because our masters are infatuated with our meat.’
‘We have a choice: the evil may be patiently borne or savagely resisted.’

‘. . .one of the most unique horror novels to come along in a long time.’
– Dark Funeral

Reviewed by Tyler Ferguson in Dagobert’s Revenge

‘While at face value the horror fiction genre may seem to be the right label to list this book under, we may find more than fiction lying under the surface. The author, a History professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, OH, has created a work that can be described as terrifying, revolting, sadistic and even fascinating. I prefer to describe it as fascinatingly terrifying, revolting, sadistic and somewhat familiar in an archetypal sense. The book makes the reader want to gasp and turn away, but it appeals to one’s morbid curiosity so well that you cannot but read on, because waiting for you is a horrific reality that you pray is only fiction. And in this (hopefully) fictitious reality you will find truth and secrets you are not ready for.

On the surface the book relates an encounter between the author and a strange women who wants to tell her story. The woman, obviously disturbed, begins to recount to the author a story involving her and her friend Maddalena. The story takes place on October 13, 1972 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Readers might recognize this as a setting of other notorious paranormal occurrences. Quite literally, the woman tells of the time she met God – or gods in this case. However, these gods do not follow our common idea of what a god should be. These gods are the gods of old; the jealous, lustful rulers of a forgotten past. Maybe they are the “watchers” or the reptilian deities so many pages have been devoted to. The author doesn’t clarify this point but tells us that they are the “Master Species”, a race driven by lust and hunger. And to them, humans satisfy both desires. These monsters seduce our main character and her friend by appearing in a form that they would assuredly trust, gaining that trust until they show their true nature. This is when the horror begins.

The author spares no detail in relating what the woman told him. The monsters tortured and ate her friend while she was being raped. The author goes on to recount the years our main character spent in captivity living in a subterranean world with the beasts. He describes the society and habitat of these creatures and their true intentions. Reader beware: we are spared no savage detail. As the book ends, the author tells of his last encounter with the woman and finally we realize our own horrifying destiny.

Now we must examine what hides in the dark corners of this book. The author himelf commented that, “This book is about violation in every form. In an occult context – in a style that is part H.P. Lovecraft, part Octave Mirbeau, and part Marquis De Sade, it explores crime, depravity, and madness. Some who penetrate the darkness will find illumination; others will simply despise and judge.” Read this book for only the superficial story and you have missed it entirely. The author has hidden in the text occult philosophies that many have spent lifetimes trying to understand. I tell you to read this book with your eyes open to the mysteries that are hidden on every page. I will not spoil the quest that I am sure the author hopes we undertake, but I can tell you that in this book are hidden the secrets of some of the world’s greatest societies, ideas and truths of a forgotten time, tenets of religions long believed dead, and observations of our world many know but are afraid to face. A poet once wrote:

” I used to see forever.
My future was mine.
My ideas were powerful.
Fear and hatred changes all.
I gave a body to them
Their return was a corpse.
Promises that never spoke.
But give more, they ask.
More of my death, which they began.
Do they always empty your head?
What gods that came for love
Then killed for selfish lust.
Lust, that is what they had.
Humans, the food that satisfies the thankless gods.”

‘I highly recommend adding The Cannibal Within to your occult collection.
Place it on a shelf alongside Alcheishe Bruiloft van Christiaan Rozenkruis and read it in the same manner.’

The most complete summation to date of the New Testament evidence for magical practice by Jesus and the early Christians. The very notion of Jesus being a sorcerer runs so against the grain of the Western cultural myth that even non-Christians are likely to find it far-fetched or even vaguely disturbing. Nevertheless, scholars steadily accumulated evidence for magi-cal practices in the New Testament throughout much of the 20th century . It is that ever expanding body of knowledge that has made this book possible. This book examines the following: The nature of the earliest Christian documents, the defects of their trans-mission, and the evidence for the suppression of descriptions of magical acts.

The closely related problem of the New Testament accounts as historical sources.

The radically apocalyptic nature of Jesus’ message and the expectations of the early church.

The failure of the apocalypse to occur and the theological reaction to that failure.

The role of magic and mystery religion in early Christianity.

A revisiting of the story of the “beloved disciple” and what it may tell us about Jesus and suppression of evidence about his life.

Early Christians were accused of practicing magic by Jews, Pagans, and other Christians. Magic in the New Testament examines magical praxis common to the New Testament, the magical papyri, the Sepher Ha-Razim, the Book of Enoch, the apocryphal Acts and the pre-Nicene church fathers and surveys the professional literature on early Christian magic from Additional topic include:

Exhumation of A Murder
The Life and Trial of Major Armstrong
Robin Odell
Format: Softcover
ISBN: 186992892x New ISBN 9 781869 928926
£12.99/US$26
Subjects: True Crime

”The case of Major Armstrong, the celebrated Hay Poisoner, the only solicitor ever to hang, is one of those classic, old-fashioned English murders which hail from the heyday of court-room drama when, with the hangman lurking in the pine-and-panel wings and the black cap an object of horrifyingly alarming currency rather than mere symbolism, the loser in ‘the black dock’s dreadful pen’ lost all. It comes straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s essayed nostalgia for the era of the Great British Murder, when, after a Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire, you put your feet up on the sofa and, with a good strong cup of mahogany-brown tea, read all about the latest ‘good’ murder in the News of the World. And the Armstrong case was unquestionably one of the best; right up there in the grand tradition of Dr Palmer of Rugeley, Neill Cream, Mrs Maybrick, Dr Crippen, Seddon, and George Joseph Smith.”
– – Richard Whittington-Egan

”Now the case itself, as has been said to you, is a remarkable one, a deeply interesting one and I doubt whether any of us engaged here today have in recollection so remarkable a case in its incidents.”
– Mr Justice Darling, Herefordshire Winter Assizes, Thursday, 13th April 1922

”On the rim of the twentieth century loom the Titans – Seddon, Armstrong, Crippen, G.J. Smith and Landru, and then, in the era of booze and bullets, art descends literally to hack-work.”
– Dorothy Dunbar, Blood in the Parlour

Praise for EXHUMATION OF A MURDER

”This is, indisputably, a comprehensive study; embracing every aspect, exploring every angle; chronicling events and interpreting participants from remote and obscure beginnings to violent or peaceful ends. I advise anyone who has long subsisted on intriguing scraps and morsels about Armstrong to have this book ready to hand when leisure offers time for a satisfying repast…it is unique, and will inevitably become the last word on Armstrong and the case which bears his name.”
– – Edgar Lustgarten

EXHUMATION OF A MURDER is the fruit of painstaking research over many years by J.H.H.Gaute, a well known authority on the literature of crime and a former editor on the genre for a major publisher, and the late Dr Hubert Trumper who lived at Cusop, near Hay-On-Wye, the village where Armstrong lived and carried out his crime. This book contains a wealth of documents and photographs.

On Saturday 2 September 2006, we travelled to the town of Hay-On-Wye to accompany Robin Odell for a book signing at the atmospheric Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, 39 Lion Street, where there is a good selection of True Crime and Murder & Mystery Fiction titles, by masters such as Dennis Wheatley, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and Robin Odell.

Robin was fresh from his lecture to the History of Medicine Society of Wales. Due to a booking mishap, it was relocated from Hay to Builth Wells! Even so there was a steady stream of interested customers and connoisseurs of the genre – some of whom, are shown in the photo: From left to right, Robin Odell, Anne & (sitting) Derek Addyman, Robin Odell’s partner ‘Non’, and holding glasses of wine are two lovely ladies, Joan & Friend. Thank you ; )
– Murder & Mayhem Bookshop, 5 Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford, HR3 5AA.

Hay-On-Wye is a good place with a buzz to visit. There are lots of bookshops covering subjects for every interest, as well as eating places and shops for more retail therapy. We stayed up the road in Hereford and were directed to the Rose Garden pub just north of the Roman Road in Munstone. The beer was excellent – Flowers IPA and the home made food really was just that. In Hay we had another lovely pint, Old Black Lion Ale at the Black Lion in Lion Street – Major Armstrong’s ‘local’ so they say – although not too local as his wife didn’t like him drinking! The food there was also really good. The cafe opposite the Clock Tower (see below) is very user friendly – newspapers, real coffee –

For information about Hay-On-Wye, including town maps, books, the Literary Festival, places to eat, hotels, B&Bs, shopping, and things to do, please check out the Official Hay-On-Wye Website www.hay-on-wye.co.uk

In the autumn of 1888 the streets of London were streets of terror. The cause – a series of mysterious and apparently motiveless murders.

Respectable citizens cowered behind shuttered windows and multi-locked doors. Ironically, however, it was not the respectable who were in danger.

The victims were all drawn from the trade which necessity still compelled to haunt dark alleys and doorways at dead of night – the prostitutes.

Theories on the identity of the murderer have been many and various: that he was a fashionable doctor, even that he was a she – a midwife.

Robin Odell has produced an absorbing factual reconstruction of all the crimes and a brilliant new theory, based on modern methods of detection,to solve the greatest mystery in British criminology. Most readers will accept his theory as the long-sought answer to a baffling real-life whodunit, as the most likely epitaph on a terror known as JACK THE RIPPER IN FACT AND FICTION.

LORETTA LAY
– is a Specialist Detective Fiction and True Crime Bookdealer and a leading authority on Jack The Ripper.
www.laybooks.com
*****

MURDER ONE UK
– Murder One UK is an online, mail order only bookseller and a successor to the famous Murder One bookshop that traded in the heart of Charing Cross Road for over twenty years.
www.murderone.co.uk
*****

CASEBOOK
– is the Web’s largest public Jack The Ripper Archive.
www.casebook.org
*****

JACK THE RIPPER FORUMS
– The place to be for all things Ripper.
www.jtrforums.com
*****

RIPPEROLOGIST
– The Journal of Jack The Ripper, East End and Victorian Studies, is available in electronic format on subscription /Email contact@ripperologist.biz
www.ripperologist.com
*****

RIPPER STREET / BBC TV series now on DVD– Haunted by the failure to catch Londonʼs most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) now heads up the notorious H Division – the toughest police district in the East End. Charged with keeping order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his men fi nd themselves fi ghting to uphold justice and the rule of law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper – is he back for another reign of terror. The shadow of the Ripper is still felt in the neighbourhood by the vigilantes, the sensation-seeking newspaper hacks and the men who hunted – and failed to find – the notorious murderer. It seems that even though the notorious killer has disappeared, there are plenty more willing to stain the streets of Whitechapel with their victims’ blood…

Robin Odell was born in Hampshire in 1935. After working as a university laboratory technician and completing his National Service, he developed an interest in crime writing.

His JACK THE RIPPER IN FACT AND FICTION published by Harrap (1965), is still regarded as a major contribution to the subject. In a writing career spanning more than thirty-five years, he has written or co-written sixteen books. He now lives in South Oxfordshire and continues to write and lecture on crime and criminology.

He acknowledges his debt to the researches of the late Dr Hubert Trumper, a medical practitioner in Hay-on-Wye, and the late Joe Gaute, distinguished crime historian and publisher. Their combined efforts sustained over several years brought many insights to bear on the life and trial of Major Armstrong.

Robin Odell won the Gold Medal at the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the True Crime category for Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer (Kent State University Press) and is a nominee of the Mystery Writers of America 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

The ancient hungry stones of Coptos in Upper Egypt have soaked up the stories of the inhabitants along with their blood. When archaeologists unearth a magician’s box in the rubble of an ancient Egyptian tomb, it propels Jay into a supernatural journey across space and time. She merges with the mysterious Zenobia, a native of ancient Coptos. Zenobia and her family are fleeing from the advancing Roman armies that are returning to their Egyptian frontier bent on punishing its rebellious citizens. The only escape from the frying pan of Coptos is into the fire of the Eastern desert. Their journey on Pan’s Road is fraught with new dangers but also new possibilities, as the protagonists are led to the heart of an ancient mystery in the lost city of Ombos – Citadel of Seth, the Egyptian god of Chaos.

Ayurveda is an Asian medical system which has its beginnings in the sixth century BCE and thrives even to the present-day. There was once a celebrated doctor called Caraka who lived in the second century of our era. He was one of the greatest physicians that has ever lived. He recorded the fact that the gods themselves were perplexed by the continued existence of disease, which was a hindrance to humanity’s progress to enlightenment. These same gods, he says, therefore prepared the way for Ayurveda, which literally means the ‘science of longevity’ to be taught to the human race. Thus the title of this book is Medicine of the Gods.

Medicine of the Gods is the first of a series that aims to introduce the physical and metaphysical concepts of Ayurveda to a non-specialist audience. Medical ideas underpin a great deal of Eastern thought especially Tantrism, alchemy, yoga and the science of love. The book is not intended as a series of health tips or as a textbook for the clinical practice of medicine, which in the Ayurveda tradition requires at least seven years intensive training. The book is aimed at students and lovers of South Asian culture, perhaps also anthropologists and others with a need for a straightforward introduction to the core principles of another scientific tradition.

Praise for first edition:
‘The author’s main purpose, introducing ancient Indian medical theory in a relatively trustworthy manner to the interested general reader in easy language, while at the same time being intellectually challenging, is served well by this book.’
-Rahul Peter Das in Traditional South Asian Medicine Vol 6 2001

‘This book contains virtually everything you could want to know about the Hindu system of Ayurvedic medicine, which began on or about the sixth century BCE and is still thriving today. The history, correspondences or “humours’, and other intriguing aspects of this intricate system are described in easy-to-understand language for those unfamiliar with Ayurveda. There is also a catalogue of ailments and how Ayurveda views each of them, and illness in general. I found this fascinating reading, both as a western herbal practitioner, and as a reader fascinated by how other cultures ‘
– Reviewed by Cerridwen Connelly in The Pentacle

He was a Wellcome research student at Oxford, where his teacher was the later Professor B K Matilal, a widely respected expert on South Asian rational thought. He has published several books, articles,and even the odd poem (see ASHÉ).

Handbook for Rebels and Outlaws is a book about freedom. Written for intellectual swashbucklers-men and women who are radicals in politics and infidels in religion-warriors who hammer the stake of fear into the heart of tyranny-this volume belongs in select book collections, between the black magic and the pornography texts.

Mark Mirabello, who has served as visiting Professor at Nizhny Novgorod University in Russia, is a Professor of History at Shawnee State University in the U.S.A.He has a Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow and a M.A. from the University of Virginia.Mirabello’s area of expertise is the “outlaw” history on the “frontiers and margins” of human civilization. He lectures on Alternative Religions and Cults,Terrorism and Crime, Banned Books, Intellectual History, and other subjects. According to Mirabello, “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.”Mirabello’s publications deal with the supernatural (The Odin Brotherhood and The Crimes of Jehovah), the unnatural (The Cannibal Within),and the natural (Handbook for Rebels and Outlaws). The Cannibal Within has appeared in an Italian-language translation (Il Cannibale Dentro) by Stefania Marchini from Edizioni Clandestine.

The author of The Odin Brotherhood and The Crimes of Jehovah, Professor Mark L. Mirabello lectures on Intellectual History, the History of Medicine, and Alternative Religions and Cults at Shawnee State University in the USA. Formerly a visiting Professor at Nizhni Novgorod State University in Russia, he has a Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow. This fictional narrative, The Cannibal Within, is based upon a real life encounter with a person not unlike the anonymous antiheroine whose story Professor Mirabello retells.

After a sinister encounter with Aleister Crowley in a Soho pub, Dylan Thomas visits his mentor Victor Neuburg, formerly the Beast’s principal follower. Everything else in the book follows on from this reputedly true event.

Dylan was standing by the bookcase squinting at the titles. He had grown a little plumper in the year since Vicky had seen him but was still cherubic, his nest of curls tousled, though not by wind, for it was one of those temperate days in early June when London flings off its overcoat and apes Marseilles. Instead, his unshaven chin, bloodshot eyes and rumpled blue check suit, with the telltale bulge in the right-hand pocket, spoke of a night of it. Nevertheless, something in his look seemed haunted by more than drink.

‘Do you think a man can read another’s mind, Vicky?’ he demanded, without preamble, in that singsong voice in which only the lilt was Welsh. ‘I was in the Swiss last night, in cahoots with this Polish girl I’d met at Pop Kleinfield’s. We had put back a few, and she was laying into me something chronic. I had heard that sort of guff before, so I just stood there doodling on the bar. I noticed a man sitting in the gloom. He was staring up at me. Large fellow, thickset, looked like a stockbroker, apart from his head, which was shaven, oh, and the hands, which were very dainty. In one, he was miffing a brandy; with the other, deliberately, as though he wanted me to notice, he took a pen from his jacket and began drawing on a napkin. The cheeky bugger’s mimicking me, I thought.’

‘Shaven head, you say’ said Vicky, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his excitement.

‘Apart that is from a little horn of hair, which I noticed when he lumbered over like an eclipse and tried to hypnotise me with the pin on his swaying tie. It was a large ebony brooch, bearing the head of a stork-like bird with a long bill curved like a boomerang. Moreover, did he stink! There was this cloying scent like cheap perfume. “I think we artists should compare productions,” he wheezed, and waved his drawing under my nose. Bugger me black if he hadn’t drawn the same as me!’

————————————–

What if the Beast returned and you were not sure if he were the best or worst thing that had ever happened to you?

Sybarite among the Shadows finds Victor Neuburg on June 11 1936 with the poet he discovered, Dylan Thomas. They embark on a quest whose object is Neuburg’s old master, the Great Beast 666; settings, the Surrealist Exhibition, and pubs and clubs of bohemian London; characters, Augustus John, Nina Hamnett and Tom Driberg. Neuburg confronts his demons; Crowley does too. They also meet something far more menacing: MI5’s plot to avert the Abdication.

Praise for SYBARITE AMONG THE SHADOWS

‘McNeff’s novel is so different from anything else you’d normally find on a bookshelf that it should perhaps be a compulsory purchase.’Independent On Sunday

To use Aleister Crowley in a work of ‘faction’ is brave indeed. Just his name casts a spell over the page Richard McNeff has faced up to the task with aplomb and realistically recreates him in all his bizarre, mesmerizing complexity.’
Martin Booth, author of Aleister Crowley: A Life

From Snoo Wilson:

‘Full of fascinating nuggets…..Neuburg’s crisis of identity with AC is very well observed.’

RC MCNEFF was born in London. He is a published poet and short story writer, and has worked internationally in education and the art world. His interest in Crowley was sparked by contact with associates of the Beast at an early age.

‘Once one is fairly competent at practical sorcery, there is little of importance that remains to be said or read about the subject; the magician at this point tends to emphasize inner development in his work. It seems to me that Chaos Magic itself has reached this point; the basic ideas needed for anyone to construct his or her own system of sorcery and to hone their skills are already covered by the available books. What has been lacking so far, is a Chaos magical approach to the investigation of the ecstatic states that underlie magical gnosis. This book, rather than trying to provide yet another slightly different flavour of Chaos technique, takes as its starting point the relationship between ecstasy and magic; between Chaos Magic and Chaos Mysticism, if you like.’ from Chaotopia! page 8

Chaotopia! is neither Utopia nor its opposite. It is what Austin Osman Spare called ‘the chaos of the normal’, seen through an illuminated eye, the eye of the sorcerer.

Chaotopia! includes updates and evaluations of techniques in Chaos Magick and an exploration of ecstatic states in relation to both magick and mysticism.

Praise for Dave Lee’s Chaotopia!
‘A highly intelligent book by a leading Chaos Magician which will broaden and deepen Chaoist debate, theory and practice.’
– Peter J. Carroll

MORE REVIEWS

”Chaos magic has come magician and NLP maven Lee. This is not a primer or grimoire; instead, the book puts chaos magic in its conceptual context, explaining the theoretical and metaphysical vistas which have underscored the art’s development since its inception under the asgis of the late, great Austin Osman Spare.

It allows us to see chaos magic äs a form of autonomous mysticism; not so much a syncretic exercise in cosmic tourism äs a balancing attempt to make sense of what arrives in one’s head. This makes it more democratic than the intimidating acolytism of learned magic in the European tradition. Chaos magic rests on the principle that the practitioner can apply belief at will, rather than surrendering to any particular paradigm (thus the slightly wrenched meaning of ‘paradigm stuft’ in chaos practice). It also assumes that altered states permit a powerfui interaction with one’s own centres of power, and äs a result, chaos magicians experiment with psychotropic techniques, including drug use, meditation, hyperventilation and extreme exercise.

Lee shows us the intellectual underpinnings of a practical System, without rendering the art, or his discourse on it, abstract or arch. He sets out the theoretical contribution of Robert Anton Wilson et al, explains Aeonics, and the trajectory of its distillation from the baroque theatre of angelology, and expounds the vital notions of chaos and Illumination, äs Spare originally conceived them, and as practice has altered and matured them.

This is not for the beginner in chaos magic, but it is a good guide for the observer with a grounding in the history of European magic, and a grasp of its cultural milestones. If you ever wondered why magicians do what they do, it’s because it works. If it didn’t, the tradition would have died out with the birth of science; it hasn’t and is enjoying a fertile period. Chaos magic is central to the continuing health of magical traditions, and writers like Dave Lee are central to that influence. His observation that accomplishe magicians concentrate on inner development ties chaos magic firmly to the Spiritual traditions of alchemy, and suggests that the development of chaos magic as a Spiritual endeavour has a long future, as well äs a brilliantly energetic past. Great stuff.”Review from Sly Delaney – FT214 – Fortean Times verdict 8.

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”Chaos Magick has been the “sorcery” of choice for some years; indeed it is feared by many to have become way too trendy. There have been many books coming onto the market supposedly outlining the Chaos Magick vision which seem to confuse incoherence with mystification.. However, I am very pleased to say Chaotopia! is not one of them indeed I consider it one of the better books on Chaos Magick I have read in quite a long time. It was originally published in 1997 but includes a very succinct but updated introduction which gives us a snapshot of the basic principles of Chaos Magick and how it works.

In many way I found Chaotopia! a real “debate starter” it covers so many subjects, all of which demand further thought, investigation and discussion, for a relatively small tome of 200 odd pages there is little “padding” and lots of content, no wasted words here ! There are carefully placed “interludes” which include all sorts of exercises, meditations and rites in addition to practices throughout the work so Chaotopia offers a solid balance of theory and practice.

Lee outlines a theory of magick based on Leary and Robert Anton Wilson’s model of Eight Brain Circuits; this is quite an intriguing model and does offer quite a lot of insight into how magick work. He also outlines later in Chaotopia! Carroll’s model of Aeonics and cultural evolution. For the budding Chaos magician I would suggest comparing these with such developments as Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber’s Integral Model, each has its benefits and drawbacks. The Eight Brain Circuits are more practical (i.e. psychedelic), while Wilber’s model is certainly more cerebral. Aeonics has a magical foundation but I think lacks some integration into the bigger picture which Wilber’s offer. As you can see there is a lot to think about in this work ! Every chapter I read made me what to read more, think more and practice more….

There is a very insightful chapter on wealth and money, a subject looked down on by “high” magick and yet so imperative in today’s busy and demanding work. There is a great section on cursing and exorcism which avoids the paranoid mood so often found in works on “psychic self defense” and offers down to earth guidelines and well as techniques if you really need them.

The section on sex and magick is impressively without pretense and covers all sorts of issues ranging from the use of sexual fluids to S & M. I especially found the section on sex and smell impressive and felt Lee explored area’s ignored by other works.

The theoretical chapter on Magick and physics is a real intellectual stimulator. It offers a new theoretical foundation for magick as found within the Bose-Einstein Condensate. It will trigger lots of discussion and debate.

I could continue chapter in this way. There is so much packed in here. Chaotopia! is how magical books should be written. No padding, no BS, no wasted space, lots of important information, practice advise and hints. An avoidance of pretense and an openness which leaves the reader eager to go out and learn more and practice more.
Dave Lee, Thank You !”
Review in Living Traditions

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You enjoyed reading Bright from the Well and Chaotopia! and would like to know more about the latest techniques, articles, resources, workshops, news and events from the author, then check out DAVE LEE’S CHAOTOPIA WEBSITE www.chaotopia.com

Bright from The Well
Northern Tales in The Modern World
Dave Lee
Format: Softcover
ISBN:
£10.99/US$22
Subjects: Northern Tradition/Chaos Magick.

REVIEWS

Attentive readers might have noticed me banging on about the collective & individual fading of memory, & the need to imagine an alternative language to talk about radical social change, entailing a re-memberance, or putting together of scattered parts strewn over a landscape of fragments.

Into my hands recently came a new book by Dave Lee, Bright from the Well – Northern Tales in the Modern World. Mandrake of Oxford (2008). It’s a retelling & reimagining of the creation & social origin myths of the Northern European tradition, including the Völuspá, & Rigsþula (Rig’s Tale). Comprising five short stories & five essays, it’s an odd but compelling read, combining a reworked & updated phenomenology of the myths with vividly told stories set in the contemporary world of would-be sorcerers & Chaos Magic.

Those with a suspicious turn of mind wrongly might detect a whiff of the Thule Society, & the romantic/reactionary projects dreamed up by the likes of W. B. Yeats & D. H. Lawrence, which often resulted in psychosomatic afflictions of the right arm. But Dave Lee is no New Ager, sharing my view that these are people with too many easily acquired beliefs to spend, who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. Think rather of the imaginative legacy & radical engagement of William Blake. Great stuff, ideas sparking off in all directions.
Klaus Bubblehammer, Bubblehammerblog
bubblehammerblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/recommended-reading.html

–
Bright From The Well
– Northern Tales in the Modern World
by Dave Lee
Review by Akashanath

A common difficulty for magicians moving from one tradition to another is reductio ad nauseum. With little effort, it is easy to nail the symbolism of one’s latest trip onto the pre-existing crucifix of one’s earlier experiences, eventually reducing every opportunity for novelty to a stale repeat of one’s preconceptions. Chaos Magick has often fallen into this trap, its dogma of ‘non-dogmatism’ leading adherents to strip belief-systems to their ‘essentials’, sometimes to the point where they lose much of their beauty and function. At the opposite extreme one can simply be overwhelmed by the strangeness and unfamiliarity of a new world-view, and fail to find a point from which to begin one’s assimilation. The Norse and Saxon myths, with their fragmented, archaic language and almost prehistoric themes, can often evoke this type of response. In his newest book, Dave Lee lithely navigates the pass between these twin peaks, taking time to pause and explore the dilemmas, or muse on them in the form of short fables. People expecting a book about the runes will not be disappointed. Those hoping for further expositions on the subject(s) of Chaos Magick will find plenty of interest. But for me where Bright From The Well comes into its own is as a series of reflections on dilemmas that will be familiar to many 21st century occultists.

For example, Chapter 5 is entitled “The Magician In and Against The World.” It’s essentially an analysis of the twin functions of the magician as anarchist, challenging the false autocracy of consensus reality, and the magician as priest, strengthening social traditions by helping the laity to connect them to their spiritual and cosmic sources. Within his complex analysis, Dave grapples with magicians’ tendencies towards transcendence on the one hand and immanence on the other. This rang loud bells for me; in my magickal quest I have often lurched from mind-bending hedonism to ruthless ascetic austerity and back again, struggling to marry my hungers and drives with some arbitrary construct of ultimate purpose. Dave also concludes that some sort of unification is necessary, describing this in terms of the intermarriage of the Vanir and the Aesir, the two Northern pantheons who exchange hostages somewhere near the beginning of time. Dave’s exegesis interprets the former as gods of immanence and the latter as deities of transcendence and consciousness (though not exclusively so). In a story from Snorri’s Prose Edda, Dave tells us how the Aesir (in the form of Odin) and the Vanir (in the form of Tyr) trick the Fenriswoolf (primal chaos) into allowing itself to be bound, creating the ordered universe that is a necessary precondition for human society and hence both esoteric and exoteric religious practice.

Students of Tantrika may find parallels here, and indeed Dave makes passing reference to the left and right hand paths. In many contemporary Hindu icons the transcendent Shiva is depicted sitting on his mountain, meditating and smoking Ganja, largely disinterested in the world. One myth tells us how the goddess Kali once went on a killing spree. Initially invoked by men seeking support in their war with the demons, Kali has lost sight of her original intention in an orgy of destruction. With all the demons slain, she turns her unstoppable fury on her former allies, slaughtering them with her many arms. Summoned from his mountain, Shiva is intrigued. Lying in front of her with his c**k erect, he looks up, turned on by her warped face and blood-stained body. Gradually her lust for killing turns into a different kind of lust, and the two deities begin to f**k. Separate from one another, they are aimless, functionless. In unity, Siva (transcendence) gains the capacity to manifest in the physical world, while Kali (immanence) transmutes her destructive power to generative.

Some of the other sections completely obviate the need for parallels by speaking directly to the magician’s experience. In Chapter 7, the author recounts a fascinating and credible list of magickal anecdotes spanning over 20 (and perhaps closer to 30?) years of workings, grouped into a rough typology of function. Several chapters take the form of stories, some obviously derived from Nordic originals, others less so. The style is engaging and entertaining, not laboriously educational or annoyingly whimsical, and each is short enough to be knocked off quickly (or omitted altogether) should it not be to the reader’s taste.

As well as re-telling stories from the northern traditions and presenting a novel method of working with the entities described as dwarves, the book contains a complete rune poem in English. Although it probably wouldn’t stand alone as a manual of rune magick, anyone genuinely interested in the subject could probably learn something new. The main strength, for those interested in Nordic traditions, will probably be for those looking for another perspective from which to triangulate dry, historical academic texts on the one hand and the often pedantic dogmatism of modern Odinists on the other. Overall, as the title implies, the collection is refreshing and inspired. Well worth a read!

Dave Lee has over 20 years of experience in practical magick. An early editor of Chaos International Magazine, he is the author of Magical Incenses and the Wealth Magic Workbook.

He has worked with the Illuminates of Thanateros for many years, and presents workshops and lectures in the UK, USA and mainland Europe. Dave lives in England, and is engaged in continual magical researches which will no doubt find their way into print in one form or another.

Tantra has been defined as “a mystical philosophy” and as “an unorthodox religious tendency”. Both definitions are incomplete.

While Tantra has mystical, philosophical and religious aspects it is, above all, a technique of action – a system of physical, mental and spiritual discipline incorporating meditation, yoga, and sacramental worship in the widest sense of the phrase. This system has one purpose: the transformation of the individual – his or her rebirth to a new existence.

There is no “tantric faith” to be accepted or rejected on the bases of thought and emotion. tantrics make the same claim as Western magicians: “if you follow a certain course of action you will be led back to the roots of your own identity and will learn the truth about yourself and the universe you inhabit.”

Tantra For Westerners is a complete theoretical and practical guide to the Way of Action, covering the concepts of pleasure and pain, power and passivity, esoteric physiology, Tantra and Qabalism, right-hand and left-hand Tantra, tantric ritual for westerners and the arousal of Kundalini – the serpent power.

Francis X King (1934-1994) was a well known authority on magick, mysticism and religion. His books includes Ritual Magic in England and The Magical World of Aleister Crowley.

The Flying Sorcerer is the only biography of an enigmatic 18th century magus Francis Barrett, whose book The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer, laid the foundation of the current magical revival. He was the first author since the middle ages to compile a manual or ‘grimoire’ of magick. The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer is widely read and still capable of providing insight.

Francis King offers a fascinating picture of Francis Barrett, a man who lived on the frontier of technology, both in terms of the inner landscape and his pioneering experiments in balloon flight. It discusses his teachers, peers, and the subsequent progress of his disciples.

The symbolism of the pierced heart: Froome/Nicholas Roerich:/ McCannon
/ Book Review, etc.
Reviews of JSM2
‘After being dunked in a cauldron of magic potion, the JASM now has classier paper, a larger format and bigger type and has grown to almost 400 pages.
The 12 articles further the Journal’s remit to present and promote new academic writing, thinking and research on all aspects of the subject, and demonstrate again just how broad this ever-expanding field is. One would have to have completed courses in ancient history, anthropology, religious studies, linguistics, philosophy, post-modernism, art, literature, folklore, the sciences and quite probably mathematics to properly assess the material here.
So, as a film studies graduate, I feel perfectly placed to pass comment…
Articles include: an anthropological insider’s look at a troupe of archly post-modem HP Lovecraft- inspired magicians, and their relationship to our world and thatof The Great Old Ones, as experienced through guided meditations and dead-of-night possession rituals; magic,superstition and supernatural belief in the trenches of WWI; the evolution of Tintagel as a mystical Celtic pilgrimage site; an overview of the Russian mystic and artist Nicholas Roerich; a critical deconstruction of Kenneth Grant’s oozy oeuvre; witchcraft in 19th century Devon; libertarian magical iconoclast Lionel Snell (aka Ramsey Dukes) on cultures of scepticism and belief, and more besides. Diverse materials, then, people who really know their stuff.

The Journal is not entirely unproblematic, however. most of the pieces are clearly and engagingly written, one or two are o presented in awkward academese; S in others, one’s eyes can hardly move for the tangle of footnotes scattered across the page. Perhaps my gripes are with the academe itself, but if JASM seeks wider readership, these issues wort considering. Otherwise, another fine emission.’
– Mark Pilkington, Fortean Times

The Pentacle 13
‘Don’t be put off by the academic titles these articles are well worth reading whatever your path and I can’t wait for Issue 3. – rated 5 Pentacles’

JSM3 – Drs Dave Green (University of the West of England, UK) and Susan Johnston Graf (Penn State, Mont Alto, USA) are taking over as co-editors of the journal.
We wish to thank Dave Evans, founding editor, for all his wonderful work in getting the journal up and running and establishing its reputation. The new editors are also pleased to announce that Mandrake is continuing its involvement with the journal as publishers.
Contents:
Amy Lee – A Language of Her Own: Witchery as a New Language of Female Identity
Dave Green – Creative Revolution: Bergsonisms and Modern Magic
Hannah Sanders – Buffy and Beyond: Language and Resistance in Contemporary Teenage Witchcraft
Mary Hayes – Discovering the Witch’s Teat: Magical Practices, Medical Superstitions in The Witch of Edmonton
Penny Lowery – The Re-enchantment of the Medical: An examination of magical elements in healing.
Jonathan Marshall – Apparitions, Ghosts, Fairies, Demons and Wild Events: Virtuality in Early Modern Britain
Kate Laity – Living the Mystery: Sacred Drama Today
Research Articles:
David Geall – ‘A half-choked meep of cosmic fear’ Is there esoteric symbolism in H.P.Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath?
Susan Gorman – Becoming a Sorcerer: Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart and the Magic of Deleuzian and Guattarian Becoming
Book Reviews

Contents
The Practitioner, The Priest, and The Professor: Perspectives on Self-Initiation in the American Neopagan Community/Laubach, Martinie’ and Clemons/
The Trinity of the Hebrew Goddess: A Guided Presentation Of Goddess Narratives and Submerged Beliefs : DeMente
The Topography of Magic in the Modern Western and Ancient Egyptian Minds : Stannish
The science of magic: A parapsychological model of psychic ability in the context of magical will : Luke
Is Magic Possible Within A Quantum Mechanical Framework? : Ash
Angels with Nanotech Wings: Magic, Medicine and Technology in The Neuromancer and Brain Plague : Lord
Rowling’s Devil: Ancient Archetype or Modern Manifestation? : Lauren Berman
“Delivered From Enchantment”: Cotton Mather, W. B. O. Peabody, and the Struggle against Magic : Sederholm
In a Mirror, Darkly : A comparison between the Lovecraftian Mythos and African-Atlantic mystery religions : Geall
The Journey of The Lion King and the Collective Unconscious : Marsh
The Third Time’s the Charm”: Mythic Operative Magic in the Merseburger Zaubersprüche : Moynihan
The Old Irish Impotence Spell: The Dam Díli, Fergus, Fertility, and the Mythic Backround of an Irish Incantation : Bernhardt-House
Reading the Turkish Coffee Cup and Beyond: The Case of North Cyprus : Karimova
Reviews
Issue 5 is now seeking contributions. Scholarly articles in English about any aspect of magic/occultism are welcome up to 8000 words in length.
Submission to the journal is by Email attachment, in Rich Text Format documents using Harvard Citation Style. Full submission details, an outline style guide can be found here
http://www.sasm.co.uk/styleguide.html
Could all submissions now be sent to Dave Green David2.Green@uwe.ac.uk
Please feel free to contact Dave or Susan – sjg9@psu.edu – about the suitability of any proposed article, but in principle we aim to be as inclusive as possible, welcoming submissions from any academic discipline concerning any aspect of magic/occultism from any geographic region in any historical period. Academic articles from magical practitioners are also encouraged.
Deadline for submissions is 21st June 2006, with early submissions welcome.
Society for Academic Study of Magic – elist
The Academic Study Magic e-list is back by popular demand. The list is now being managed and moderated by Amy Hale and myself, Dave Green. We felt that the list, despite its difficulties and personality clashes, was a valuable and exciting resource for academics and others interested in all forms of magical practice from any period of history, any geographic area and any disciplinary background. The new moderators will not tolerate the flaming of old and want to foster an open and tolerant attitude to what will always be an interdisciplinary topic with many divergent views – long may it stay so and let us learn from these differences.
If you wish to join you can do so at this url:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC.html
It might take a little time to recapture the old momentum of the list, but in the meantime we can start reacquainting ourselves so please feel free to post an introduction once you have joined and let’s see the academic magic phoenix rise from the ashes …
Please feel free to circulate this to any relevant lists and individuals.

Greg Humphries is an artist and magician who has over 15 years of experience exploring magical practices throughout the world. The work outlined within this book covers the years 1999 – 2002 and influenced his move to Cornwall, England where he currently paints happily in his studio at the bottom of the garden.
Check out Greg Humphries blog greghumphries.wordpress.com

Julian Vayne has been involved with the magickal world for over 20 years. He has published numerous articles, led a variety of esoteric workshops and courses and is a prominent figure in comporary British occultism. His interests include drugs and magick, permaculture and the politics of sustainability, teaching and graphic art. He lives in Devon where he tends his newly planted orchard.

“A book about witchcraft with a more authentic ring to it has long been desperately needed and this offering surely must be among the best attempts made so far.” – Runa Magazine

WiTCHA presents many secrets of English witchcraft in plain language, giving details of widdershins and deosil circle casting, spell-craft, divination, spiritism, sabbats and esbats, sacrifice, entheogens, philosophy, history, and more. The focus is primarily upon those aspects commonly called ‘operative witchcraft’ of ‘results’ and ‘getting things done’, rather than the supposedly more ‘spiritual’ aspects that have been the subject of so many books of late. These are illustrated with photographs taken by my step-father, Adrian Bryn-Evans, detailing, with their kind permission and support, exhibits from the MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT, Boscastle, North Cornwall. The disappointment of those seeking a ‘tradition’ to fall back on when they doubt their own judgement, I have attempted instead to portray an attitude of spiritual freedom central to the Craft. Some might even call it the witchcraft of the left hand path. Nevertheless, members of our family continue to be of service to their community, as those witches were in generations before.

Reviews
‘When Nathan Harris says of his latest book – “You will not come across a book quite like this one again in a hurry.”, I suspect he could be right. The book is hand bound in black goat leather and is printed on parchment paper. In appearance it looks rather like an old witch’s grimoire and is as much a ritual object as it is a book. Inside the quality of printing is very good and is complemented throughout with excellent illustrations by the author himself, as well as ten colour photographic plates by Adrian Brynn-Evans of ritual objects from the Museum of Witchcraft.

The book concerns itself largely with what could been called the operative aspect of traditional witchcraft – spells, charms, necromancy, divination, ritual tools and there consecration etc., but it also includes information on the myth cycles, theology, philosophy and praxis of some branches of the craft. In fact this book bravely covers aspects of traditional craft which very few serious authors have dared cover before, it does this with a great deal of insight, which has evidently come from experience of these and other areas of magickal practice. This is a book written by a practising witch for practising witches with some experience, and so may well not be suitable for the beginner.

In these times of the mass publication of books full of dummed-down rubbish claiming to be witchcraft this book comes as a breath of fresh air . . .
Jack Daw reviewing the first edition for Mandrake Speaks.
(JD’s Cornish Witchcraft website)

From Runa 17:

Nathaniel Harris makes the statement of the back cover of his book that he officiates in the House of the Old Ways as their ‘Fool’. The wise among you will know that this should not be taken in its modern sense but rather as quite an impressive claim. Those who know Mr Harris will not consider it overly boastful of him to claim this, however.

A book about witchcraft with a more authentic ring to it has long been desperately needed and this offering surely must be among the best attempts made so far. Within one finds knowledge on the tools required, the workings, dodgy substances, sacrifice, naming, necromancy and a whole load of useful hints on’doing’. His chapter ‘A New English Rune Poem’ will not please all who will read this review but I found it most refreshing. A good example might be: Thorn ‘Fuck the roses / send me the thorns’, or Oz ‘We are off to see the wizard / The wonderful wizard of Oz./Because… Definitely worth a read. – Karen Wainwright

Pentacle No.11:

‘OK. – I admit it – I was wrong. When this book came out as a limited edition Wood & Goatskin bound manuscript, I felt it would be style over content. However this edition having come from Mandrake of Oxford, I can see that there is some- thing in this book that others have missed, or rather dismissed without giving it a fair chance. Admittedly, the author has been on the receiving end of much criticism, both deserved and unfair. The thing that shows through in this book is the author’s passion for his subject. In fact, this book was originally written for friends and family, so it needed no converts. It didn’t have to justify anything to outsiders, so Harris could get on with chronicling his craft. Containing a number of charms, spells, rites and divinatory practices, this book is representative of other Grimoire I have read and seen. Whether the content works is up to you, but this is listed as a book of ‘operative witchcraft’ – so results should be forthcoming. In all, there is a wealth of information in here, the author puts his practices up to scrutiny – some- thing his detractors have been unwilling to do.’ – Jon Randall – 4½ Pentacles

[Nathaniel Harris is currently unwell. He is suffering some form of mental illness, one symptom which is misdirected rage against former friends and associates. He has been making unpleasant, unsubstantiated accusations on various Internet forums. Under no circumstances should any of these accusations be given credence. He is receiving professional help and we wish him well for the future. ]

”Concerning Nathaniel J. Harris”:

”Thanks for stopping by,

I, along with many folk from many different paths within the British Pagan and esoteric community, have attempted to ignore the unpleasant material originating from Mr Nathaniel Harris (currently ‘Nathaniel Mortlock’). However his continued vilification of me and many others within our community has prompted me to write this brief statement.

While anyone who is familiar with Mr Harris of old simply shakes their head and says (and I am paraphrasing to keep things polite) ‘oh dear, he’s up to all that stuff again!’, there are those who may not know him directly or who have only encountered his online material. There are also those who hear from him via mass spam mails, through deceptive Facebook accounts or other channels, who may simply wonder what on earth is going on.

The origin of Mr Harris’ vendetta against the esoteric network that I’m part of (The Illuminates of Thanateros or IOT) goes back many years, during which time he has altered the nature of his accusations several times. His harassment of numerous people, both from within that organisation and other parts of the British esoteric community, is a long running saga. More recently he has taken to accusing myself and various other people (his Mum, his Dad, his step-father, his partners former husband, a former neighbour, his publisher, two ex-partners and a large number of others) of participating in some kind of abusive cult.

I do not know the details of Mr Harris’ mental health, whether he is ill or simply nasty. What I do know is that some two years ago action was taken to remove a child from Mr Harris’ ‘care’. I was able to provide some evidence to the court and emotional support for some of those involved. The decision of the court was that the child in question be removed from Mr Harris and returned to a more suitable and safe family situation. There were multiple reasons why this action was taken against Mr Harris which, for reasons of child protection and confidentially, it is not appropriate to make public.

That being said, people who are familiar with child protection law in the UK will know that this kind of action is not taken unless there has been serious neglect of the child in question and they are at grave risk of further harm. Such safeguarding decisions are only made with the agreement of a variety of informed opinions including police, legal representatives, teachers, social services, family members, medical practitioners and others.

I can only assume that the accusations that Mr Harris makes about me and others arise because he is angry about his inability to maintain healthy relationships. In short, he is looking for people to blame for his own difficulties.

I am aware that by publishing this statement Mr Harris is likely to react badly; perhaps by increasing the volume of unpleasant messages he regularly sends to myself and others, or otherwise lashing out in his distress. My previous refusal to engage with the unpleasant and false material that Mr Harris produces was born out of the compassionate hope that he would find some form of suitable support (whether that be in a mental health or other context) and be able to transcend his current fixation. Sadly this has not yet happened but I earnestly hope that he can find some measure of peace and healing to address his own challenges and shortcomings.

Having explained, for the proverbial record, the background to Mr Harris’ current obsession with me I shall simply leave this information hanging in cyberspace so that, if Mr Harris feels like sending out another bunch of ranting emails or posting further wild accusations, others who are less familiar with his current modus operandi may be referred to it.

Runia wanted us to have badges, ‘so that one Zoist can recognize another, if you meet outside, or if we have provincial centres.’

There was a murmur of dissent. Some of us felt this thing was getting inflated. And we didn’t want badges. We weren’t boy scouts; just a few people who wanted to come here and sit and talk to each other on Saturday evenings.

‘All right, no badges,’ she said. ‘But it is agreed we have a name?’

It was agreed but there was no enthusiasm for the name, our feeling being for the informal. Before we left Runia made us cups of tea.

When eventually we broke up, and I stood again in the road outside, I felt I could tell my mother I had been among distinguished people. But the truth was I felt something else as well. I felt I had been in ancient Egypt and for this feeling I could find no explanation.

Not all of those who had been present on the first evening returned the following Saturday, but as I attended every week I began to know the regulars. Arriving soon after 8 (dinner at the hotel where my mother and I lived, was at 7, so it was a rush), I always found a certain number of people there already, though there was usually some time to wait until Vicky and Runia came from the inner room. It was in this waiting time that I had to find my feet, as it were among the other young ones. Nobody was ever introduced at Vicky’s. One just found out for oneself. I did not find the young men easy although they made efforts to draw me into the circle, for they assumed an acquaintance with modern poetry and political authors greater than I possessed; I could not always follow their allusions, and I had the feeling they all participated in a form of culture slightly strange to me. I was therefore grateful when a good looking young man, quiet mannered and of a more ordinarily civilized demeanour, settled himself beside me and asked, simply, ‘How did you come to Vicky’s?’

I told him about the circular letter I had received. He knew Geoffrey Lloyd had sent some out and asked, ‘What do you do when you’re not writing poems for Vicky? What’s your background, so to speak?’

I told him I had been on the stage since I was seventeen.
He said ‘Fancy our having an actress among us!’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘William Thomas’, was what I first thought he said, but then he added, ‘It’s a special Welsh name.’
There could be nothing very special about William, and I puckered my brows.
‘You’ll never have heard it before,’ he said. ‘Nobody in England ever has. It should really be pronounced Wullam, in Welsh.’ Or was he saying ‘Dullan’?

‘It’s a special Welsh name,’ he repeated. ‘I shall have to spell it for you. D-Y-L-A-N. In Wales, it’s pronounced Dullan. But I’d been corresponding with Vicky for some time before I came to London, and when I arrived I found he had been calling me Dillan, in his mind. I thought if Vicky didn’t know how to pronounce it nobody in England would, so I decided to take it as the standard English pronunciation of my name. Otherwise I’d spend all my time telling people it was Dull and not Dill, and I think perhaps Dillan sounds more elegant than Dullan. Only Idris objects and thinks it’s frightfully fancy! Because he’s Welsh, too, and he knows! but now I’m getting even Idris trained to call me Dillan, though it’s under protest!’
‘What part of Wales do you come from?’ I said.

‘Oh, I only come from a small town. Swansea.’

Whereas I had previously felt myself to be the most naive member of a group otherwise composed of sophisticated, bohemian intellectuals, I now felt I had, vis-à-vis Dylan Thomas, at any rate, an advantage in being a Londoner. ‘I should have thought Swansea was a large town,’ I said. ‘I was near there all last summer. If you had been to the theatre at Porthcawl you would have seen me on the stage!’

‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t’ he said. ‘What a pity!’

Giving the conversation a turn he did not expect, I said, ‘Have you ever been down a mine?’
‘No.’

‘I have!’ I explained triumphantly. ‘Near Crumlin. I once played a January date in the Rhondda. Or more exactly the Ebbw Vale.’ I told him how I had persuaded the men at a pit to take me down the shaft, and how, having arrived at the bottom, I was given a lamp to hold and escorted along a passage which had been hewed through the coal to a point where it became so low that one would have had to proceed on hands and knees. I was shown a fault seam, which I felt with my fingers.

‘You have seen something in Wales which I haven’t!’ said Dylan. He explained that his home was some distance from the mining regions. He described the part of Swansea where he lived, with a detail I cannot now recall, except that it sounded salubrious and agreeable. His father was Senior English Master at the Grammar School. ‘Living where I do one doesn’t really see anything of all that,’ he said, with reference to my allusion to the coal mining (and depressed) areas. ‘Idris comes from the Rhondda,’1 he said. ‘I haven’t been into those areas.’ As though he had been slightly shamed by my adventure, he added, ‘Perhaps I ought to have done.’

‘It’s because you live there that you wouldn’t think of it,’ I said. ‘When one is touring one feels one must see everything in case one never comes again. When I was sixteen, my mother and I made a tour of Italy, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Capri, and back through Perugia, Florence and Milan. We felt we had to go into everything, even the smallest church we passed on any street. We realized we had never “done” London half as thoroughly because we took it for granted.’

I have no ‘outrageous’ sayings of Dylan Thomas to record. His conversation with me was perfectly drawing-room and unexceptional. I remember him as a polite young man. Friendly, but not at all presuming.
He told me the origins of the circle of which I now formed part. ‘First one and then another of us found our way to Vicky’s through entering into correspondence with him or something like that, and so a circle grew up around Vicky. We’re all very fond of Vicky.’ He explained that, ‘always reading each other’s names in print we began to wonder what the ones whom we hadn’t seen were like.’ So they had had the idea ‘of sending out circulars to everybody who was a contributor. He thought it had brought in some interesting people. ‘Well, it has brought you!’ Perhaps one could name some kind of a regular thing of it. ‘The only thing I don’t like is the name Zoists!’ he said.

I laughed and said, ‘It does sound a bit like protozoa, zoophytes and zoids!’

Dylan pulled a funny face.

‘We’re always called “Vicky’s children”,’ said Dylan. ‘It’s a bit sentimental, but I don’t think we shall ever be called anything else.’

It had been at the back of my mind while he was speaking that his name, as he had spelled it out, was one which I had read in the Sunday Referee in a context more important than that of the weekly prizes. I had not taken the paper regularly before I joined the circle, or I would have known the whole build-up. I said, ‘Aren’t you the winner of a big prize? I believe you’re one of the distinguished people here!’
‘It was through Vicky and the Sunday Referee that a book of my poems has been published,’ he said. He explained that a prize was offered twice yearly, part of which consisted in the publication of the winner’s poems in book form. ‘The first was awarded to Pamela Hansford Johnson. She isn’t here tonight. I was given the second of them.’ He said that Vicky had helped him pick out what he thought were the best of the poems he had written.

‘What’s it called?’

‘Just 18 Poems. It was published just before Christmas, and I think it’s doing quite well.’ He added, ‘I’m very grateful to Vicky. It’s a big thing for me. One’s first book is the most difficult to get published. Everyone says so. Now that I have one book published, it should be easier to get the next accepted, perhaps by an ordinary firm.’

My sentiment for Vicky was already so strong that I was slightly shocked.

Dylan Thomas saw it. ‘Vicky doesn’t expect us to stay with him!’ he said. ‘This is a nursery school from which we are expected to go out into the world. When we can get published elsewhere nobody is more pleased than Vicky!’

Just then the moment for which we had been waiting arrived. The door from the inner part of the house opened and our hosts came out to join us.

Vicky came straight up to Dylan and me. I did not know which of us the distinction was meant for but it gave me joy. He stood by my chair, looking down on us beamingly, and said to Dylan, ‘You’re entertaining this little lady?’

Dylan said, ‘I’ve been telling her something of the history of the Poet’s Corner.’

*********************************

Laugharne,
Carmarthenshire,
Wales
19 June 1940
Dear Miss Fuller
I haven’t heard anything from Vicky and Runia for years, until about a fortnight ago.
Then Pamela Johnson wrote to tell me that Vicky had just died. I was very grieved to hear it; he was a sweet, wise man. Runia’s address is 84, Boundary Road, NW8. At least, I suppose she is still there. I wrote her a letter, but I haven’t had a reply yet; probably she’s too sad to write.
Yours sincerely
Dylan Thomas

——————————

Really two books in one. Firstly a record of one man’s extraordinary journey to magical enlightenment. Secondly the story of Aleister Crowley, the magus who summoned Neuburg to join him in the quest.

‘The book opens with the author’s entry into the group of young poets including Dylan Thomas and Pamela Hansford Johnson. They gather around Victor Newburg in 1935 when he is poetry editor of the Sunday Referee. Gradually the author becomes aware of his strange and sinister past, in which Neuburg was associated in magick with Aleister Crowley.

‘Those interested in Western occult history will welcome this revised and expanded edition of an important work first published in 1965.

Overton Fuller’s biography of Neuburg paints an intimate portrait of this complex character who was as much mystic as poet. A prominent figure in London’s literary bohemia in the 1930s, Neuburg encouraged such writers as Dylan Thomas, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Hugo Manning and many others, including Overton Fuller.

In his earlier days, Neuburg had been a disciple, magical partner and possibly even lover of Aleister Crowley during a period of ground-breaking magical experiments.

‘Vicky encouraged me as no one else has done,’ Dylan Thomas declared on hearing of Neuburg’s death. ‘He possessed many kinds of genius, and not the least was his genius for drawing to himself, by his wisdom, graveness, great humour and innocence, a feeling of trust and love, that won’t ever be forgotten.’ ‘ . . . there was a whiff of sulphur abroad, and all of us would have liked to know the truth of the Aleister Crowley’s legends, the truth of the witch-like baroness called Cremers, the abandonment of Neuburg in the desert.’

– Pamela Hansford Johnson

‘No dry biography this but an illuminating and compelling account of a multi-faceted personality who lived during an exciting period of occult and literary history. An absolute must-have!’
– (ME) In Prediction Magazine November 2005

Jean Overton Fuller is no stranger to controversy. For more than half a century she has been exploding myths in a manner than has often lead to a complete reappraisal of the establishment view. The only child of Indian Army Officer Capt J H M Fuller and the artist Violet Overton Fuller, she holds a degree in English from London University. She had a brief career on the stage and knew Victor Neuberg, (magical partner of Aleister Crowley) and his circle in the mid 1930s.

During World War II she used her eagle eye to search for espionage in sensitive postal communications. She later made researches into the fate of her friend Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan and other British agents in France under German occupation.

Jean Overton Fuller’s acclaimed biography Noor-un-Nisa-Inayat Khan (Madeleine) was first published by Victor Gollancz in September 1952, and because of the enormous public empathy to the heroic life and death of beautiful Princess Noor, had run into fourth impression by November of the same year. Several subsequent editions followed, including a Pan paperback entitled Born For Sacrifice, and a new hardback edition by East-West Publications in 1988.

Miss Fuller joined the Theosophical Society in 1940, and is a former vice-president of the Astrological Lodge of London. She was a regular contributor to the scholarly journal Theosophical History www.theohistory.org founded by Leslie Price and edited by Professor James Santucci. Jean Overton Fuller also contributed letters for ”Alpheus”, Govert Schuller’s excellent Theosophical website for Esoteric History www.alpheus.org

[Jean Overton Fuller is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books of very different character from this, and is also an artist. She studied at the Academie Julien in Paris, and paintings she exhibited at the Chelsea Art Society and elsewhere include a number of those of the cats and other immortals who figure in this story.]

*****

Driven to it- An autobiography
by Jean Overton Fuller
Published 2007 by Michael Russell
ISBN 978-0-85955-306-3 / Hardback / 376 pp /
Illustrated with previously unreleased photographs.
[‘Driven to it‘ is the long awaited autobiography by one of England’s rarest and most erudite writers. A must read for Jean Overton Fuller’s fans. She is a natural writer. And a true original.]THIS TITLE IN NOW OUT OF PRINT.

*****Krishnamurti and The Wind: An Integral Biography
By Jean Overton Fuller
ISBN 0722950187 / 2003 / TPH London / Hardback / Paperback
[Another must read for all students of Theosophical History.]

*****

OTHER BOOKS, BIOGRAPHIES & STUDIES BY JEAN OVERTON FULLER

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (Madeleine) The Starr Affair Double Webs – Horoscope for a Double Agent Shelley – A Biography Swinburne – A Biography The German Penetration of S O E Sir Francis Bacon – A Biography The Comte de Saint-Germain, (Last Scion of the House of Rákóczy) Blavatsky and Her Teachers – An Investigative Biography Cats and Other Immortals Déricourt, The Chequered Spy – A Biography Krishnamurti and The Wind – An Integral Biography Driven to it – An Autobiography

*****

MONOGRAPHS

*Joan Grant – Winged Pharaoh *Cyril Scott and A Hidden School
[*can be purchased from the Theosophical History website.]

‘If you have only one book on the Celtic past and present, this has to be the one’- The Pentacle

‘Imagine the forest. As darkness falls, the somber beeches disappear in misty twilight and shadows seem to gather under their branches. Far away, the blackbird’s call tells of the coming of the night. The birds cease their singing, silence descends, soon the beasts of the night will make their appearance. Between tangled roots, hidden by nettles and brambles, the earth seems to ripple. A few humps of earth seem to emerge from the ground. They are the last traces of burial mounds, of mounds, which were tall and high 2500 years ago. Many of them have disappeared, hidden by tangled roots of beech and oak, ploughed flat by careless farmers, others again show caved-in tops where grave robbers have looted the central chamber. The locals shun these hills. There are tales that strange fires can be seen glowing on the mounds, and that on spooky nights, great armed warriors arise from their resting places. Then the doors to the deep are thrown open and unwary travelers have to beware of being invited into the halls of the dead and unborn. Here the kings of the deep feast and celebrate, time passes differently and strange treasures may be found. Who knows the nights when the gates are open? Who carries the primrose, the wish-flower, the strange blossom that opens the doors to the hollow hills?’
‘Highly Recommended’ – The Cauldron

Contents

0. Welcome to the Nemeton.

1. People of the Mounds

2. Mysteries of La Tene

3. Druidic Dreams

4. Evolution of the Bards

5. A Confusion of Faiths

6. The Filid of Ireland

7. Three Rays of the Awen

8. Taliesin Penbeirdd

9. Enchantment

10. Tales of Transformation

11. The Secret Arts

12. The Ever Hungry Cauldron

13. Trees of Eternity

14. Coda: The bed of Taliesin

From Pagan Dawn:
Anything by Jan Fries is these days immediately snapped up by most chaos magicians out there, and this one should be no exception. Fries is an expert in his field and his work is always widely explored and well presented. Occasionally, I find his writing style a little patronising towards those fluffy-bunny Pagans amongst us, but come on, we all have to start somewhere. As such, 1 would not recommend this book except for the serious occultist who perhaps has not looked too closely into Celtic magic and who wants to try something a little different. Fries knows that in order to be accomplished you need to know where your magick comes from as much as where you want it to take you, and his historical tracing of Celtic magick is knowledgeable and well-researched. The connections he makes to modern-day techniques and practises are seamless and appear almost effortless, except we know Fries did not get to be the specialist he is without a lot of hard work and extensive study. A must for all serious magical practitioners.

Cauldron of the Gods (Detailed contents)

Welcome to the Nemeton

People of the Mounds
The Mound Journey; Raising the Dead; Worship of the Height

Mysteries of La Tene
Talismans; Dangerous Dead and Unusual Burials; Offerings to the Deep; The Sanctity of Water; Exercise: Into the Deep; Places of Worship; Sacred Groves; Temples of Gaul Exploring Gournay; A Hoard of Trophies; Roquepertuse; Tracing Shadows Through a Maze; Teutates, Esus and Taranis ; A Deity of Horses; Rhiannon and the Morrigan; Lugus; Gods of the Land; Cernunnos; Matrones; Divine Beasts; Head Cults.

Druidic Dreams Druids in the Classical Period; Riddles from Antiquity; The Decline of the Druids; Druids in Legend; Druidic Revival;

Evolution of the Bards
Bards and Druids.

A Confusion of Faiths
A Christian Buried Alive; Bardic Christianity;Book of Taliesin

The Filid of Ireland
The Scholar’s Primer; Exercise: The Unique; Poets and Philosophers; Heritage of Babel; The Poet’s Path; Under a Golden Branch; Celtic Harps; From a Dark Cell Land of the Living.

Three Rays of the Awen
Bardic Frenzy; The Spirit of Prophecy; The Wild Man from the Mountains; Breath of the Awen; The Quest for the Muse; Hanes Taliesin; Three Inspirations of Ogyrven; The Trefoil Sign; Deity of the Poets; Ritual: Bride’s Bed; The Personal Muse.

Taliesin Penbeirdd
Who is the Historical Taliesin? The Mythical Taliesin; Trouble with Maelgwn; Chair of the Bards; Ritual: Chick of the Chair; A Torrent of Questions; Exercise: Riddle Magick; A Question of Identity;

Enchantment
The Fire of Motivation; The Gift of the Nettle; The Rite of Cursing; Bright Blessings; Lorica; Greetings for Sun and Moon; Spells of Healing; Gesture; Nightfears, Evil Eye and Spells of Destruction; Magical Battles;

Jan Fries is the author five books and several articles that deal with some very interesting free-form shamanic techniques. Here’s what one of Jan’s students said about seething:

‘Seething is probably the most useful magical technique I have ever learned. I first was taken by the pleasure of it. My body felt warm and sensual, and seething in the hips felt quite sexual. I liked the feeling of my body taking over where the shaking was first voluntary – but I could still have some control, making the shaking stronger or more subtle. After a while I started to see visions – something that very rarely happens to me. I could see (with my physical eyes, not astrally!) the surface of the land in the centre of the circle rippling, like waves of energy. It was a really moving experience in a site that – until then – had not been particularly ‘special’ to me… it ..has had a major impact upon my magical work which used to be largely indoors, as at last I have found a way that I can work outdoors. This gives my magical work a potency that it simply didn’t have before.’

Jan lives in Frankfurt near the Taunus Mountains. He is a musician, artist and magician. I first met him sometime in the eighties at an ancient ritual site in Wiltshire called Silbury Hill. He was there along with several others to participate in a ritual with american sorceress Nema, author of Maat Magick. I heard from a friend about a short manuscript Jan had written on sigil magick. It was being privately circulated amongst the world’s ‘rosicrucian’ community and getting a very favourable response. I was immediately struck by its clarity, originality and above all humour. I asked if I could publish it and as it was a bit too short to make a complete book I suggested that maybe we could add some material from Austin Spare. But Jan would have none of that – he immediately went away and wrote enough for a full sized book – the result is Visual Magick – a manual of freestyle shamanism.

”I recommend the book to one and all whom have an interest in Victorian Society, for the off-beat origins of many institutions that are influential on our lives today. More than a few ideas found within Mystical Vampire such as the possibility of Annie Besant and Helena Blavatsky being more than just friends, make the book a good investment. For the Ripperologist, the two (and there may be other gems in there, so buy it!) items I mentioned on Collins / Stephenson are worth the price of the book alone. Few books (Sugden, Begg and Evans come to mind) are as well referenced and footnoted as this one. Ms Farnell has done an excellent job on her subject, Minna Mabel Collins.”
Howard Brown, Casebook: Jack The Ripper, the Web’s largest Jack The Ripper public archive www.casebook.org

”Kim Farnell has done devotees of gaslight and mediums a service in bringing Mabel’s world back to life.” Gary Lachman – The Independent On Sunday.
Gary Lachman’s works include:Turn Off Your Mind -The Mystic Sixties and The Dark Side of The Age of Aquarius (Sidgwick & Jackson) and The Dedalus Occult Reader: The Garden of Hermetic Dreams (Dedalus).

MYSTICAL VAMPIRE
The characters:
*Mabel Collins, Theosophist, novelist, fashion columnist, journalist and anti-vivisection campaigner
*Madame Blavatsky the extraordinary and highly influential Russian occultist and author, and other eminent members of her Theosophical Society
*Annie Besant, social reformer and Theosophist
*Robert Donston Stephenson, a suspect for Jack the Ripper and Mabel’s lover
*Frances Power Cobbe, social reformer, suffragist and anti-vivisection campaigner
*Charlotte Despard, social reformer, and anti-vivisection campaigner

Mabel Collins was an independent woman in the oppressive Victorian climate. She wrote many novels, but most will remember Mabel Collins, for her best selling mystical text Light On The Path published by the Theosophical Society. After her fall out with Madame Blavatsky,she carried on with her life as an esotericist, traveller and writer. She was moved by the plight and suffering of helpless creatures and became a campaigner for the abolition of vivisection.

Kim Farnell is a professional astrologer, writer and biographer. She provides a range of services through her own consultancy and can be contacted via her personal website www.kimfarnell.co.uk

Kim Farnell is also a popular lecturer and a contributor to the scholarly journal Theosophical History founded by Leslie Price and edited by Professor James Santucci. Ms Farnell’s previous works include a biography of the influential esoteric astrologer Sepharial.

Philip H. Farber is a writer, hypnotist, NLP trainer, ritualist, and consciousness explorer. He is best known for his book on ritual magick, Future Ritual: Magick for the 21st Century and as the creator of Meta-Magick, a system of practice combining elements of magick, NLP, hypnosis, and more.

Timothy d’Arch Smith is a well-known bibliographer, reviewer and antiquarian bookseller with a special interest in the by-ways of literature, notably the occult and the curious.

For Aleister Crowley a book was a talisman and their every part right down to colour, dimension, and price was symbolic. He also used magical techniques to gain literary success–thus new editions of Crowley’s writing multiply daily, tantalizing the bibliographer. All the more indispensable is this authoritative guide to his magical first editions.

”…one could hardly wish for a more stimulating guide…” –The London Magazine

”One of the more immediately striking things about the book is its gentle humour.”- Time Out

The Books of The Beast. Timothy d’Arch Smith. (Mandrake).
The author of this collection of studies of twentieth-century occultists is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, bibliographer and reviewer with a life-long interest in esoterica and erotica. This collection has a bibliography of Crowley that gives the book its title and biographies of the Roman Catholic priest, playwright, schoolmaster, collector of homoerotic pornography, demonologist and closet Satanist, Montague Summers, the eccentric R.A. Caton, who shared Summer’s interest in young boys and was briefly his publisher, Ralph Chubb, writer, artist and pederast who tried to create a new religion based on the worship of a boy-god, and pioneering female occultist Florence Farr of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn. There is also an account of Crowley’s disguised appearance as a character in Anthony Powell’s famous novel A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), one of many he made in fictional works, and a description of the private collection of erotica in the British Library. The book concludes with a fascinating autobiographical epilogue on the author’s adventures in the London occult scene of the 1950s and 1960s. These feature Michael Houghton from the Atlantis Bookshop (compared by the author to Grumpy in Walt Disney’s Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs because of his stature and demeanour!), Crowley’s forgotten biographer and cricket fan Charles Richard Cammel, who died during a Test Match at the Oval (what a way to go!), the writer and biographer Jean Overton Fuller, the Beatles (who attended a witchcraft exhibition organised by the author), and Crowley follower Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Highly recommended.The Cauldron # 136, May 2010.

Timothy d’Arch Smith is a well-known bibliographer, reviewer and antiquarian bookseller with a special interest in the by-ways of literature, notably the occult and the curious.

For Aleister Crowley a book was a talisman and their every part right down to colour, dimension, and price was symbolic. He also used magical techniques to gain literary success–thus new editions of Crowley’s writing multiply daily, tantalizing the bibliographer. All the more indispensable is this authoritative guide to his magical first editions.

Timothy d’Arch Smith, widely acknowledged as a leading expert on Crowley and on underground literature, offers several shorter articles on:

Nadia Choucha grew up in the Middle East and Scotland, and has a degree in History of Art from Edinburgh University and a master’s degree in Digital Humanities from King’s College, University of London. She lives in London where she currently works as an editor and digital strategist for an academic research organisation.

‘Mr Channing plays Trotsky to my Lenin, and Luther to the most holy of Chaos Orthodoxies.’ – Pete Carroll

In the year 1564, Dr John Dee published his work, Monas Hieroglyphica. Its central symbol represented the unity which was the gnosis of the monotheistic aeon.

Now over four hundred years later, Anton Channing has published his long awaited debut work Kaos Hieroglyphica, within which he expounds a new symbol, the Kaos Hieroglyph. This symbol represents the plurality and freedom of the New Aeon. This work of magical alchemy draws on such diverse material as Thelema, the Chaos Current, the Maat Current, Timothy Leary, Witchcraft, Paganism, the Hermetic Tradition, Taoism, Shamanism and the author’s own Pineal Gland.

The Kaos Hieroglyphica offers the reader interpretations of Hermetic symbolism in a way that is both insightful and relevant to New Aeon Magic.

Peter J Carroll. December ’04:
Infamy! Infamy! Anton has surely got it in for me, in these two hundred pages of relentless revisionism. Here we see heresy of the most outrageous kind, Mr Channing plays Trotsky to my Lenin, and Luther to the most holy of Chaos Orthodoxies.

Methinks I may excommunicate him with extreme prejudice for revealing the secret asymmetries and imbalances in my Eight Magics which have propelled me to global notoriety, undeserved riches, and domination of the metaphysical realms.

May Baphomet dam his loins and may Eris make his balls explode, for he hath proposed a counter-reformation back into the antique concepts of soul, ‘being’, and symbo-realism.

He even proposes, and mark this, an alternative order completely lacking even the most basic dominance hierarchy, terrible secrets, and bloodcurdling initiation rites, yet he seems such a reasonable guy.

I have arranged to have a drink with him to see where it all went new-age shaped.

In the meantime read the book, I found it both provocative and entertaining but I have to warn you about the shockingly high ‘is’ count. That in itself provides a key to the symbolistic conceptual style of the author.

Anton Channing has practised meditation from 1985, began psychic training and tarot in 1990, converted from Catholicism for Paganism and Magick in 1992 and underwent simultaneous training in Natural Magic and Chaos Magic with two different groups from 1996. In late 2000 he wrote the manifesto for the Kaotic Illuminated Adepts, which was officially launched in early 2001.

In 2003 his book Kaos Hieroglyphica was published. Leaving Chaos Magic behind, but still greatly influenced by sorcerers such as Austin Osman Spare he formed a new group from the old KIA, which he called the KIA Illuminated Adepts. Like the orginal KIA this is a non hierarchical networking organisation rather than a magical order.

Peter J. Carroll is one of the founders of The Magical Pact of The Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) which he led for a decade. He has spent thirty-seven years in research and experiment and is the author of four other books; Liber Null & Psychonaut, Liber Kaos: The Psychonomicon, Psybermagic, and The Apophenion.

“a wonderful book… in the same category as Alan Garner and Susan Cooper” Professor Ronald Hutton

‘This boy’s stupendous! He can see the past and see the gods. He’s seen the Lady of the Lake!’

A colossal Stone Age mound in Wiltshire is the legendary burial place of Merlin. When Jo’s father begins to excavate, Jo himself is drawn into an extraordinary adventure that unearths the mound’s true secret. It’s up to him to reveal it before it’s destroyed. And time is short.

‘A week ago he’d have laughed at this. Now he’s on the edge of a whole new world.’

This is a story for everyone with a taste for myth, visions and another reality…

About the book:
The Stone Age monuments at Avebury in Wiltshire are world-famous, attracting thousands of visitors each year. Two of the most dramatic are the enormous burial chamber known as the West Kennet Long Barrow, and Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. Less well known is Silbury’s “sister” mound at Marlborough a few miles due east, but this is nothing less than the legendary burial place of Merlin.

These extraordinary sites are the key locations of the novel Merlin’s Mound, in which an adolescent is awakened in startling fashion to their meaning and original purpose. It will appeal to everyone from the protagonist’s age upward with a taste for myth, legend and visions [Marlborough is surely the only town in Britain with an Arthurian motto – WHERE NOW ARE THE BONES OF WISE MERLIN – and Merlin’s Mound will appropriately be published on June 20th 2004, the 800th anniversary of the granting of Marlborough’s charter by King John who, as it happens, makes a crucial appearance in the novel…]

REVIEWS

From Dragon’s Wood Magazine:
‘Meet Joel (Jo). He’s a nice lad. He likes football, he misses his mother (who is no longer with his dad), and he has the misfortune to have an obsessive and arrogant archaeologist for his father. Jo’s dad takes him on a dig in Marlborough Wiltshire to excavate what is locally known been as Merlin’s mound. Jo really doesn’t want to be there, he would rather be watching football or playing computer games. Indeed he calls Silbury Hill ‘another pile of prehistoric pointlessness’. Jo’s relationship with his father is fraught at best and certainly not helped by some of the comments his father makes to his son.

Things start to happen…

Jo meets Dag, Gareth and Mort, three enigmatic characters who will play an interesting role as the story unfolds. Joe starts to realise that things are happening, things that he has no explanation for, things that will cause him to question and wonder. As time goes on Jo is more and more against the excavation of the Mound. He ‘knows’ that below the ground something or someone is still in residence. Is it Merlin? His father is convinced that the Marlborough site is a burial mound of someone pretty special and that somewhere in the mound four and a half thousand-year-old treasure is waiting for him to get his grasping hands on. He doesn’t subscribe to the Merlin theory however. Jo on the other hand becomes more and more convinced that digging the mound is the wrong thing to do. It becomes his mission to reveal the true secret of the site and time is running out. What is that secret and ce of will Jo succeed?

Published by Mandrake of Oxford, Merlin’s Mound is listed on their website under the ‘young fiction’ genre. Certainly the content of this book will appeal to teenagers. However that should not deter older readers. I found this both entertaining and interesting and certainly some light relief from all those other heavy books we pagans tend to read.

The author Nigel Bryant, whose involvement with Arthurian matters is long-standing and obvious from the way he writes, brings the reader a lively contemporary tale which often challenges our ideas on modern archaeology. I was left wondering whether or not digging up the past is always the right thing to do. This is the type of story that is great for us oldies to read on lazy summer afternoons in the back garden. Youngsters will no doubt identify with the often anxed adolescent that Jo is and I highly recommend it to anyone from about 15 years old. ‘

More reviews

Druid Network:
This is a book aimed at a ‘teenage’ audience, and it’s easy to see the central character appealing to many a surly teenager! But this the tale of a special teenager with special gifts, which link everyday events and archaeology – the never ending search for scientific ‘truth’ and knowledge – to the sacred within and around us all, and to the sacred landscape of Wiltshire.

But it is a work that can be read and enjoyed by any age, the story a timeless tale, one that holds the reader spellbound, fully involved with events and engaged with the participants. The monuments of Avebury and Merlin’s Mount at Marlborough come alive on the pages, and the less well known mound of Merlins Mount is central to the whole story, as the title suggests!

The tale is well written and flows beautifully and evocatively, pulling the reader in and giving real involvement with what is happening, and how the mystery will unravel. Highly recommended.

“It may seem strange,” he says, “that I laid into Brown for using the Grail as a symbol of the womb, of the sacred feminine, when that very thing is central to MERLIN’S MOUND. But the difference is that I’m using it knowingly as a symbol. And I don’t claim that MERLIN’S MOUND is anything more (or less) than a story.”

“The trouble with Brown’s book is that it’s a prime example of a dire new literary genre of pseudo-fact. Unfortunately, in THE DA VINCI CODE Dan Brown has swallowed hook, line and sinker the central thesis of a best-seller of two decades ago – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – which can be demolished in 30 seconds. ”

“The theory depends entirely on a mistake caused by astonishingly sloppy scholarship. The play on words by which the SANGREAL (the Holy Grail) is supposedly a code for SANG-REAL (‘royal blood’) – leading on to the hilarious notion (after all, let’s just stop and think about it for a second) that a child born of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was the start of a bloodline which kept going in secret for 2,000 years – simply doesn’t work. Dan Brown lists a series of ‘facts’ at the start of his book; well here’s a fact he doesn’t mention: the spelling SANGREAL doesn’t exist in any French work. It’s a pun that works only in French, but no French writer ever used it. In French it’s invariably written SAINT GRAAL. The only person who ever did write SANGREAL was the 15th-century Englishman John Hardyng whose French wasn’t very good, so he heard ‘saint graal’, didn’t know how to spell it, had a guess and wrote ‘sangreal’. And on that simple mistake, almost akin to a typing error, is the whole wild theory based.”

“I’ve no problem with it, actually – the Mary Magdalene / bloodline of Christ idea’s a fun story – but claiming it (and other supposed ‘facts’ in Dan Brown’s book) to be ‘true’ is sad in the extreme. We’ve got to be able to distinguish fact from fiction. Pseudo-fact does no favours either for fiction or for history or, for that matter, for the world of symbols.”

“I’m seriously interested in the medieval Grail stories – hence my book The Legend of the Grail [Boydell & Brewer, 2004], which brings together the eight great French grail romances of the 12th and 13th centuries and creates from them a single, coherent narrative. Womb imagery is nowhere to be seen. But that doesn’t mean I can’t use the Grail’s potential symbolism and work it into a story of the sacred feminine in MERLIN’S MOUND. But I’m not going to do a Dan Brown and claim it to be ‘true’ in the sense of being a ‘fact’. Let’s all grow up a bit. The Grail doesn’t exist and never did. But it’s there even though it’s not there. It’s absolutely ‘true’, profoundly ‘true’, when you take it as a symbol.”

Nigel Bryant’s involvement with Arthurian matters is long-standing. As theatre director and radio drama producer he has worked on Arthur-related plays and series by writers including C.S.Lewis, Rosemary Sutcliff, Susan Cooper and Kevin Crossley-Holland, and as a translator he has published modern English versions of The High Book of the Grail (Perlesvaus), the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes and its Continuations, Robert de Boron’s Merlin and the Grail and a new compilation of the medieval French romances, The Legend of the Grail: Nigel Bryant versus Dan Brown.

Child psychologist Nicola Grainger and her husband Howard have chosen to remain childless, but when Nicola’s sister and her husband are killed in a car accident in Egypt, Nicola feels duty bound to offer their young twin sons a home.

After their arrival, it quickly becomes clear that their upbringing in Egypt, their father’s country, has left them spoiled and difficult to handle. They also have the disconcerting ability to finish each other’s sentences and constantly answer to each other’s names. At times Nicola feels that they’re not two children at all, but in fact represent different aspects of one child.

As a child psychologist, Nicola knows that the boys need time to adjust to their new life, but she has failed to understand their ability to read the minds of people around them, playing on their most terrifying subconscious fears with horrific results.

In addition to these problems, Nicola finds that she is having to cope with the boys’ attachment to the handsome Sergei, a friend of their father’s in Egypt, who visits them regularly to provide a much needed link between their past life and their new one. Only Sergei truly understands these children, and only Sergei knows the truth about their past and what the future holds for them. As he draws Nicola into his magnetic web she is literally unable to get him out of her mind. To the astonishment of everyone, including herself, she abandons Howard and travels to Egypt with Sergei and her nephews. Once there, she is plunged into a world of dark eroticism and looming evil – the hidden, gaping gateway to hell.

John Barber is a researcher and prolific writer. His popular and informative website, www.johnbarber.com features excellent articles on the socio-cultural history of Britain and its great metropolis London, interviews, bibliography, as well as showcasing a collection of absorbing murder mystery novels.

FIRECHILD. One of the world’s most influential and respected witches, Maxine Sanders first caught worldwide public attention while married to the celebrated – and controversial – ‘King of the Witches’, Alex Sanders.

A highly respected priestess of the Sacred Mysteries, in her role of teacher she has encouraged, enabled and inspired students of the priesthood to take on the conscious mantle of their spiritual potential.

In this long awaited autobiography Maxine reflects on her life and magical experiences spanning modern witchcraft, wicca, paganism, Gods and Goddesses, seasonal rituals, sabbats, ceremonial magic, kabbalah and the sacred magic of the angels.
This is a unique, poignant and often humorous memoir of an extraordinary life, by a rare, courageous and inspiring woman.

The Sanders were leading figures of the 1960s occult revival, popularising their own tradition widely known as Alexandrian witchcraft.

Alex and Maxine were much sought after teachers of the Arts Magical and initiated many spiritual aspirants into the Mysteries, when the Craft was still secretive and difficult to access for those seeking initiation.

Here many of the rumours regarding Alex and Maxine are either confirmed, verified and clarified, or denied; the real facts being far more interesting and humorous than hearsay.

”This is one of the most important books ever published on modern paganism: a full and candid autobiography by one of its most influential, and charismatic figures.”
Professor Ronald Hutton – Author of The Triumph of the Moon
(Oxford University Press)

The Sanders were leading figures of the 1960s occult revival, popularising their own tradition widely known as Alexandrian witchcraft.

Alex and Maxine were much sought after teachers of the Arts Magical and initiated many spiritual aspirants into the Mysteries, when the Craft was still secretive and difficult to access for those seeking initiation.

Here many of the rumours regarding Alex and Maxine are either confirmed, verified and clarified, or denied; the real facts being far more interesting and humorous than hearsay.

”This is one of the most important books ever published on modern paganism:
a full and candid autobiography by one of its most influential, and charismatic figures.”
Professor Ronald Hutton – Author of The Triumph of the Moon
(Oxford University Press)

To book lectures with Maxine, you can contact her by visiting
Maxine Sanders Official Website www.maxinesanders.co.uk

Naqada is a sleepy little town in Upper Egypt, that gives its name to a crucial period in the prehistory of Egypt. In 1895, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the ‘father’ of Egyptian archaeology, stumbled upon a necropolis, belonging to a very ancient city of several thousand inhabitants. With Petrie’s usual luck, he’d made yet another archaeological find of seismic proportions – not just an ancient city a quarter the size of Ur in Mesopotamia, a rare enough find, but the capital of the earliest state established in Egypt! Petrie’s fateful walk through the desert led him to a lost city, known to the Greeks as Ombos, the Citadel of Seth. Seth, the Hidden God, once ruled in this ancient place before it was abandoned to the sands of the desert. All this forbidden knowledge was quickly reburied in academic libraries, where its stunning magical secrets had lain, largely unrevealed, for more than a century – until now.

This book is for all Egyptophiles as well as anyone with an interest in the archaic roots of magick and the sabbatic craft.

“The Bull of Ombos is an important and ground-breaking work. The figure of Set(h) has been of significance within Western magic for quite some time, even if he (it?) has appeared as the more controversial form of Satan. While the Temple of Set and The Storm have pioneered research into Sethian magick, the works of Mogg Morgan stand alone as major contributions to this field. What I find most unique is that they combine the fastidiousness of an Egyptologist with the experience of a modern occultist. Certainly Morgan knows his stuff, from Tantra to the modern O.T.O. from pagan and Left Hand Path magick to the Golden Dawn and traditional folklore and customs, but at the same time he approaches the subject cautiously and with the skills of a scholar even a folklorist.

What he offers in this work is what could be best described as a reconstruction of pre-dynastic Egyptian Sethian beliefs and practices . . . While Petrie’s discovery was of great significance he really didn’t appreciate nor understand it. Due to the unique practices of the “Sethians” he came to conclude they weren’t even Egyptians and hence saw them as some sort of foreign invaders. Due to this and the general ambivalence of Egyptologists to the figure of Seth, Petrie’s work in this field has remained largely untapped by later Egyptologists.

Morgan appreciating the significance of this unique resource with the eyes of a scholar as well as a magician has given us a glimpse of what the worshippers of Seth may have believed and praised. Moreover he shows the significance of these within a modern occult system, in his early work Tankhem: Seth & Egyptian Magick, he discussed how this system may have been originally Tantric in nature and its modern application. His research on the animals of Seth, images and names related to Seth, archaeological finds etc is extremely comprehensive and offers extensive clues which will take many years to fully explore and comprehend.

In Bull of Ombos: Seth and Egyptian Magick Voll II, he gives us quite an extensive intellectual framework for Sethian magick (including lots of source materials and some 78 illustrations) as well as giving us a means to bring the magick of Seth into our lives today. Living Traditions, Australia.

Recommended by The Cauldron #119

”I also want to personally thank you for your work . . . you have contributed to my practice and to my Coven’s rituals.’ – www.cotw.us, a teaching Coven, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Review in ASHÉ
“The publication of a book devoted to the Egyptian deity Seth (aka Set) is a rare enough event even in the rarified halls of academia. The publication of a modern magickal text focusing on Seth is even rarer. Despite the important role Seth played in the history of magick–his frequent appearances in the magical papyri of the Hermetic period–few modern texts have taken a serious look at the enigmatic god. This is not all too surprising, given the short-shrift and a good dose of bad PR both in antiquity and also in the Victorian mis-interpretations of the early Egyptologists. Two other modern texts come immediately to mind: Don Webb’s short treatise Seven Faces of Darkness and Mr. Morgan’s earlier work Tankhem. Mr. Morgan is an amateur Egyptologist who has long maintained and interest in the maligned figure of Seth. The Bull of Ombos begins with the 19th century discovery of an ancient city near Naqada, Egypt. The city proved to be the capital of the earliest Egyptian state. The lost city was known to the Greeks as Ombos, the Citadel of Seth. Once ruled by the Hidden God the site had been left to be swallowed by the sands of the desert–the image of the god transformed through later layers of Egyptian power and politics. As Mr. Morgan notes that most of the knowledge discovered at Ombos was quickly reburied in academic libraries. Bull of Ombos delves into these forbidden areas. Mr. Morgan painstakingly puts together the intricacies of early Sethian worship and the roll the god played in the Egyptians’ daily lives. He does not shy away from analyzing the more disturbing suggestions of previous archeological conclusions–even hints of cannibalism. From the scant clues available, the author has produced a detailed and intricate portrait of Seth that is at the same time very applicable to the modern Sethian. Mr. Morgan also provides retellings of the key Seth-related stories as appendix material–a welcome supplement to the text.”

(New Edition 2011)
You’re in your bed. It’s dark, you hear footsteps coming up the stairs and into your room. There’s someone there – a presence. They lie on you or beside you, gripping you tightly, crushing you into the bed. You can’t move. There may be a sound, a grunt or a strange smell. Time passes, you are paralysed with fear. Eventually the entity changes, expanding or contracting, moving away from you, sinking to the floor. With a great effort of will you manage to move the tip of your finger, then the hand until movement returns to your whole body and the experience ends. You have been visited by the old ‘hag’.

Dreams, the real theatre or perhaps battlefield of magick, influenced by cosmic tides that ebb and flow through us as they did the ancient Egyptians.

Katon Shual: pagan, researcher, author and sometime poet with an interest in folklore and sexual gnosticism. Sexual Magick, regarded by many as an innovative, compassionate approach to the subject of sexual gnosticism, is his only published monograph.

I work for innovative ‘new edge’ publisher Mandrake of Oxford, recently described as a ‘respected literary catalyst’, and responsible for the discovery of many new authors, including his friend and onetime mentor Jan Fries.

I regard myself as a practitioner-cum-scholar of all aspects of occultism. I was a Wellcome research student at Oxford, where my teacher was the late Professor B K Matilal, a widely respected expert on South Asian thought. Over the years I have been exploring the connections between the popular magick of ancient Egypt and its continuation/crossover with the living magical traditions of the middle East, and the Kaula/witchcraft of south Asia and beyond

I have a particular interest in divination, dream interpretation and oracles. I’ve experimented widely in using some ancient oracles to address modern queries. Consequently I do sometimes prepare “horoscopes” in the original and authentic Egyptian manner. I also use dice oracles based on Greco-Egyptian and Tantrik sources. I interpret dreams and other omens. My direct email (mandox2000[@]yahoo.com)

Books, Ebooks, Bonus Essays, Lectures, Misc

Isis In India
Work In Progress – Research into the survival of the cult of Isis in South India.
Ebook available on Isis In India

House of Life
A set of introductory magical exercises designed to complement Tankhem & The Bull of Ombos. Available free from House of Life

Strange Oxford
Updated ebook version of now out of print guide to local legends, ancient sites, folklore, magic and mystery on Kindle Ebook

Contemporary magical practitioners have always been interested in the ‘problem of evil’ – the nature of good and bad action. Take for example Helena Blavatsky’s statement – ‘demon est deus inversus’ to be found in her highly influential and monument work ‘The Secret Doctrine’ (1888:1.411). This was later adopted by the poet W B Yeats as his magical motto in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Most practitioners believe that the ancient Egyptian god Seth is the prototype for the contemporary archetype of Lucifer, Satan or the Devil. I want to take a brief look, in context, at the famous image of Seth deriding Apophis, (the demonic / chaotic serpent of ‘non-being’) as a leitmotiv for the nature or ‘personification’ of evil in ancient thought.

Spencer Kansa has written for a wide variety of publications including Hustler UK, Mojo Magazine, Erotic Review and the NME. His interviews with literary icons William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles and Herbert Huncke feature in Joe Ambrose‘s book Chelsea Hotel Manhattan (Headpress).

Charlotte Rodgers was born in New Zealand, received the PEN international young writers award for 1983 and after many years of travel, fast living and dodgy magick, now leads a life of quiet eccentricity commuting between England and Asia. She creates, exhibits, and occasionally sells art made from road kill and has had articles published in many magazines.
Charlotte Rodgers website www.perdurabu.com

Read an interview with Charlotte Rodgers on The Blog of Baphomet theblogofbaphomet.com/2017/02/20/an-audience-with-charlotte-rodgers/

Listen to Gordon White ”Talking Animism and Place with Charlotte Rodgers”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eh63XVJJvo

‘Charlotte at Play’. A film by Sean Kissling
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bUx5u7b0DA

Vincent Ongkowidjojo has been a long time student of Freya Aswynn and currently co-manages Freya’s School of Runes and Northern Mysteries. His vision is rooted in Western and Eastern esoteric philosophies. He practices and teaches Taiji and meditation. Vincent earlier published Secrets of Asgard, and Runen in de Noordse Traditie.

He graduated as a master in Assyriology, having studied both Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. Visit Vincent’s website for latest updates on talks, courses and workshops in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold is an anthropologist and psychologist with an inclination towards the metaphysics of faiths and cults of a traditional pedigree. He is a specialist in the works of Marsilio Ficino and is a practicing traditional astrologer. He has been deeply involved in the occult world with its orders and sodalities since the late 1980s. Since the turn of this millennium he discarded most modern occultism in favour of a focus on traditional forms of cult and faith, European and African. His involvement with Traditional Witchcraft leads to this presentation of Craft themes He is a sworn Brother of The Clan of Tubal Cain and Magister of the Lilium Umbrae Cuveen, its kinship group in the southern hemisphere.

Nick Farrell was born in the UK and raised in New Zealand. At the age of four he suffered from a series of night-time terrors. He saw things that were particularly frightening. He knew they were not dreams but they appeared real. These visions lasted until he was 17 when he bought his first set of Tarot cards and suddenly found himself in a Golden Dawn offshoot called Builders of the Adytum. Nick started to read everything he could find on the Golden Dawn and Magic.

Nick moved to Hawkes Bay where he hooked up with the former members of the last surviving temple of the Golden Dawn, Whare Ra. In particular he joined the Order of the Table Round which was a side order of the now defunct Whare Ra temple. The head of the order was Percy Wilkinson who, along with Jack Taylor, had implanted the Golden Dawn’s initiatory formula over the top of the original ritual. Percy and a few of the other elderly Golden Dawn adepts shared a lot of ideas with Nick who at the time was not really that interested in the Golden Dawn and had signed up to join Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki’s Servants of the Light School. Nick moved to the UK to take part in practical work of the SOL and found himself being trained by David Goddard.

In 1997, Nick visited the US where he carried out a few workshops and renewed his friendship with Chic and Tabatha Cicero and joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn forming a Temple of that Group in Nottingham. Around that time Nick wrote his first book Making Talismans which has turned out to be an esoteric classic. He moved to Sofia in Bulgaria where he wrote Magical Pathworking, The Druidic Order of Pendragon (with Colin Robertson), Gathering the Magic and Egyptian Shaman. He also began to work with the artist Harry Wendrich and his wife Nicola Golden Dawn Temple Tarot deck which is soon to be released.

In 2007 he wrote his first novel “When a Tree Falls“, which is an occult, fantasy based on his silly and at times black sense of humour. In 2008 he moved to Rome where he wrote two more books on the Golden Dawn “King over the Water” and “Mathers’ Last Secret“. Later that year he established the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea which is a traditional Golden Dawn based order which already has five temples worldwide and a thriving correspondence course.During the day he makes money as a journalist for online technology magazines including Techeye and Fudzilla.

The Typhonian deity Seth was once worshipped in Ancient Egypt. Followers of later schools obliterated Seth’s monuments, demonised and neglected his cult. A possible starting point in the quest for the ‘hidden god’ is an examination of the life of Egyptian King Seti I (‘He of Seth’) also known as Sethos.

When looking for an astral temple that included all of the ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, the temple of Seti I proved itself worthy of examination. Many secrets began to reveal themselves. The essence of the real philosophy of the Sethian and indeed what Satanism is, stems from the author’s astral wanderings in this temple.

The temple is a real place, and like any temple no part of its design is accidental. It is a record in stone and paint of the Egyptian wisdom. It also fits quite well with the Thelemic mythos and tells lots of interesting things about the ancient Seth cult – if you have the eye to see it.

Contents:

Prolegomena to Egyptian magick;

Setanism;

Tankhem;

Egyptian Magick and Tantra;

Sexual Magick;

Twenty Eight;

The Crooked Wand.

—–

Recommended by The Cauldron

THE VOICE OF THE STORM
“Considering how few modern metaphysical books are devoted to Sethian magic specifically, Storm initiates and other Sethians may find Morgan’s contribution to be of interest. Morgan also includes material relevant to the sexual mysticism of the left-hand path tradition which is relevant to the Storm’s transmission of the sinister current. Morgan’s approach is not in accordance with the purely religious vision of Seth that inspires the Storm movement (he seems to see Seth as a sort of Jungian archetype rather than a literal deity). Although we disagree with his connection of Seth to Satanism and Thelema, and some of his research in the book is dated (circa 1980s), many of Morgan’s insights and research concerning the historical cult of Seth will be illuminating to any reader interested in the Sethian phenomenon.’

SILVERSTAR
“A very personal exploration of the cult of the dark Egyptian god Set or Seth, covering ancient temples, tantrik and Crowleyan influences, sexual magick, sacred landscapes and astronomy, thought-forms, and the unjustly neglected work of the poet W.B. Yeats, who is seldom recognized as one of the most important and active members of the Golden Dawn. Mr. Morgan is an excellent example of how ancient magick can work for the modern individual: in exploring the past, you may find myths that resonate for you, that come alive in dreams and omens, appearing in unexpected synchronicities as you go through life. The Old Gods are not dead, they think we are. Mr. Morgan has also written several other works, including the thought-provoking Sexual Magick under the nom-de-plume Katon Shual.”

Gordon MacLellan is a shaman, storyteller and artist whose work sets out to find ways of celebrating the relationships between people, place and wildlife. Gordon’s books include Talking to the Earth, Sacred Animals and Celebrating Nature (all with Capall Bann), StarMatter and the Piatkus Guide to Shamanism.

Susan Cross is a poet, heritage and environmental interpretation consultant and occasional pirate. About a decade ago she realised that she has probably always been some kind of animist mystic and since then has endeavoured to make that a more conscious, clearer and brighter part of her life.

As our relationship with the world unravels and needs to take a new form, The Wanton Green presents a collection of inspiring, provoking and engaging essays by modern pagans about their own deep, passionate and wanton relationships with the Earth.

“Where do we locate the sacred? In a place, a meeting, memory, a momentary glimpse? The Wanton Green provides no easy answers and instead, offers a multitude of perspectives on how our relationships with the earth, the sacred, the world through which we move are forged and remade.” – Phil Hine.

Contents: Foreword (Graham Harvey) ,”She said: ‘You have to lose your way'”(Maria van Daalen), Fumbling in the landscape (Runic John), Finding the space, finding the words (Rufus Harrington),Stone in my bones (Sarah Males), A Heathen in place: working with Mugwort (Robert Wallis),Wild, wild water (Lou Hart), Facing the waves (Gordon MacLellan),The dragon waters of place: a journey to the source (Susan Greenwood), Catching the Rainbow Lizard (Maria van Daalen), The rite to roam (Julian Vayne), Places of Power (Jan Fries), Natural magic is art (Greg Humphries), Pagan Ecology: on our perception of nature, ancestry and home (Emma Restall Orr), Because we have no imagination, (Susan Cross), The crossroads of perception, (Shani Oates), Devon, Faeries and me, (Woody Fox), Lud’s Church, (Gordon MacLellan), Places of spirit and spirits of place: of Fairy and other folk, and my Cumbrian bones (Melissa Montgomery), A life in the woods: protest site paganism, (Adrian Harris) We first met in the north, (Barry Patterson), Museum or Mausoleum (Mogg Morgan), Hills of the ancestors, townscapes of artisans (Jenny Blain), Smoke and mirrors (Stephen Grasso), America (Maria van Daalen), Standing at the crossroads, Meet the authors .

About the editors:

Gordon MacLennan is a shaman, storyteller and artist whose work sets out to find ways of celebrating the relationships between people, place and wildlife. Gordon’s books include Talking to the Earth, Sacred Animals and Celebrating Nature (all with Capall Bann), StarMatter and the Piatkus Guide to Shamanism.

Susan Cross is a poet, heritage and environmental interpretation consultant and occasional pirate. About a decade ago she realised that she has probably always been some kind of animist mystic and since then has endeavoured to make that a more conscious, clearer and brighter part of her life.

The Wanton Green: Contemporary Pagan Writings On Place. Edited by Gordon MacLellan and Susan Cross (Mandrake). Since the 1970s modern forms of pagan witchcraft (Wicca) and the neo-pagan movement have defined themselves by an engagement and involvement with ecology, the environment and ‘green’ politics with their adherents claiming to be following a ‘nature religion’. This is a collection of essays on the genii loci, or ‘spirit of place’ in the natural world written by various Wiccans and neo-pagans including Shani Oates, Rufus Harrington, Emma Restall-Orr, Melissa Montgomery, Jan Fries, Julian Vayne, Barry Montgomery, Barry Paterson, Susan Greenwood, Mogg Morgan and others. The contents range from an experience of the faery folk in Devon to a psychogeographical guide to ‘occult London’. If you are interested in the non-traditional neo-pagan approach to nature and the environment then this book is recommended. – The Cauldron #144, May 2012.

Dual-authorship of the Clan of Tubal Cain’s Legacy defining 50 years of its organic evolution. Originating from within an unpublished ms written by Evan John Jones, the former Magister of the Clan since Robert Cochrane’s death in 1966, it serves Testament to the Will of Fate and Tenacity of Spirit here expressed, from its inception under Robert Cochrane through Evan John Jones’ own record of the Clan’s beliefs and practises to those of the Current bearers of this mantle, depicting the interweaving of Wyrd in the vital process of its existence and continuity in Troth to its Tutelary Spirit: The Star Crossed Serpent.

Shani Oates lives in Derbyshire (UK) where she is a devoted practitioner of the true art, a mystic, a pilgrim, artist, professional photographer and holistic therapist. She is also a life-long student and researcher of theology, philosophy and anthropology intrinsic to all praxes that engage the Mysteries proper. Providing valuable resources for her lectures at both moots and esoteric conferences, these disciplines serve to enrich her role and duties as the Maid of the Clan of Tubal Cain.

CLAN OF TUBAL CAIN WEBSITE www.clanoftubalcain.org.uk

As an author her published works are included within Hecate: Her Sacred Fires by Avalonia Press and other various popular pagan, folklore and occult publications for over a decade, including The Cauldron, Pendragon, The White Dragon, The Pentacle, The Hedge Wytch and The Wytch’s Standard. The second 2011 edition of Abraxas Occult Journal features her most recent contribution on the Mysteries. This, is her second book and she is currently busy on her fourth that continues to explore and explain the deeper aspects and histories of her Craft.